George  Washington  Flowers 
Memorial  Collection 

DUKE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

ESTABLISHED  BY  THE 

FAMILY  OF 

COLONEL   FLOWERS 


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THE  TROLL  GARDEN 


We  must  not  look  at  Goblin  men, 
We  must  not  buy  their  fruits; 

Who  knows  upon  what  soil  they  fed 
Their  hungry  thirsty  roots  ?  " 

GOBLIN    MARKET. 


THE 

TROLL  GARDEN 


BY 


WILLA    SIBERT    CATHER 


'}9^ 


/  MCC    P 

; ,   &     Co  ;l 


&^&d 


A   FAIRY    PALACE,   WITH    A   FAIRY 
INSIDE  THE   TROLLS    DWELL,       .       .       . 
THEIR     MAGIC     FORGES,     MAKING     AND 
THINGS  RARE   AND   STRANGE 


GARDEN  ; 

.      .      .      WORKING  AT 

MAKING     ALWAYS 

CHARLES   KINGSLEY 


NEW  YORK 

McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO. 

MCMV 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO. 

Published  March,  1905 


Copyright,   1904-05,  by  The  S.  S.  McClure  Co.     Copyright,   190S,  by 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     Copyright,  1904,  by  The  Ridgway-Thayer  Co. 


To 

Isabelle  McClung 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS 1 

THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL 55 

THE  GARDEN  LODGE 85 

"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT" Ill 

THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PHLEDRA 155 

A  WAGNER  MATINEE 193 

PAUL'S  CASE 211 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS 

As  the  train  neared  Tarrytown,  Imogen  Willard 
began  to  wonder  why  she  had  consented  to  be 
one  of  Flavia's  house  party  at  all.  She  had 
not  felt  enthusiastic  about  it  since  leaving  the  city, 
and  was  experiencing  a  prolonged  ebb  of  purpose, 
a  current  of  chilling  indecision,  under  which  she 
vainly  sought  for  the  motive  which  had  induced 
her  to  accept  Flavia's  invitation. 

Perhaps  it  was  a  vague  curiosity  to  see  Flavia's 
husband,  who  had  been  the  magician  of  her 
childhood  and  the  hero  of  innumerable  Arabian 
fairy  tales.  Perhaps  it  was  a  desire  to  see  M. 
Roux,  whom  Flavia  had  announced  as  the  espec- 
ial attraction  of  the  occasion.  Perhaps  it  was  a 
wish  to  study  that  remarkable  woman  in  her  own 
setting. 

Imogen  admitted  a  mild  curiosity  concerning 
Flavia.  She  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  people 
rather    seriously,    but    somehow    found    it    ira- 


4  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

possible  to  take  Flavia  so,  because  of  the  very  ve- 
hemence and  insistence  with  which  Flavia  de- 
manded it.  Submerged  in  her  studies,  Imogen 
had,  of  late  years,  seen  very  little  of  Flavia;  but 
Flavia,  in  her  hurried  visits  to  New  York,  be- 
tween her  excursions  from  studio  to  studio  —  her 
luncheons  with  this  lady  who  had  to  play  at  a 
matinee,  and  her  dinners  with  that  singer  who 
had  an  evening  concert  —  had  seen  enough  of  her 
friend's  handsome  daughter  to  conceive  for  her 
an  inclination  of  such  violence  and  assurance  as 
only  Flavia  could  afford.  The  fact  that  Imogen 
had  shown  rather  marked  capacity  in  certain 
esoteric  lines  of  scholarship,  and  had  decided  to 
specialize  in  a  well-sounding  branch  of  philology 
at  the  Ecole  des  Chartes,  had  fairly  placed  her  in 
that  category  of  "interesting  people"  whom  Flavia 
considered  her  natural  affinities,  and  lawful  prey. 

When  Imogen  stepped  upon  the  station  plat- 
form she  was  immediately  appropriated  by  her 
hostess,  whose  commanding  figure  and  assurance 
of  attire  she  had  recognized  from  a  distance. 
She  was  hurried  into  a  high  tilbury  and  Flavia, 
taking  the  driver's  cushion  beside  her,  gathered 
up  the  reins  with  an  experienced  hand. 

"My  dear  girl,"  she  remarked,  as  she  turned 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  5 

the  horses  up  the  street,  "I  was  afraid  the  train 
might  be  late.  M.  Roux  insisted  upon  coming  up 
by  boat  and  did  not  arrive  until  after  seven." 

"To  think  of  M.  Roux's  being  in  this  part  of 
the  world  at  all,  and  subject  to  the  vicissitudes  of 
river  boats !  Why  in  the  world  did  he  come  over  ?" 
queried  Imogen  with  lively  interest.  "He  is  the 
sort  of  man  who  must  dissolve  and  become  a 
shadow  outside  of  Paris." 

"  Oh,  we  have  a  houseful  of  the  most  interest- 
ing people,"  said  Flavia,  professionally.  "We 
have  actually  managed  to  get  Ivan  Schemetzkin. 
He  was  ill  in  California  at  the  close  of  his  concert 
tour,  you  know,  and  he  is  recuperating  with  us, 
after  his  wearing  journey  from  the  coast.  Then 
there  is  Jules  Martel,  the  painter;  Signor  Donati, 
the  tenor;  Professor  Schotte,  who  has  dug  up  As- 
syria, you  know ;  Restzhoff ,  the  Russian  chemist ; 
Alcee  Buisson,  the  philologist ;  Frank  Wellington, 
the  novelist;  and  Will  Maidenwood,  the  editor  of 
Woman.  Then  there  is  my  second  cousin,  Jemima 
Broadwood,  who  made  such  a  hit  in  Pinero's 
comedy  last  winter,  and  Frau  Lichtenfeld.  Have 
you  read  her?" 

Imogen  confessed  her  utter  ignorance  of  Frau 
Lichtenfeld,  and  Flavia  went  on. 


6  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"Well,  she  is  a  most  remarkable  person;  one 
of  those  advanced  German  women,  a  militant 
iconoclast,  and  this  drive  will  not  be  long  enough 
to  permit  of  my  telling  you  her  history.  Such  a 
story!  Her  novels  were  the  talk  of  all  Germany 
when  I  was  there  last,  and  several  of  them  have 
been  suppressed  —  an  honour  in  Germany,  I 
understand.  'At  Whose  Door'  has  been  trans- 
lated. I  am  so  unfortunate  as  not  to  read  Ger- 
man." 

"I'm  all  excitement  at  the  prospect  of  meeting 
Miss  Broadwood, "  said  Imogen.  "I've  seen 
her  in  nearly  everything  she  does.  Her  stage 
personality  is  delightful.  She  always  reminds 
me  of  a  nice,  clean,  pink-and-white  boy  who 
has  just  had  his  cold  bath,  and  come  down 
all  aglow  for  a  run  before  breakfast. " 

"Yes,  but  isn't  it  unfortunate  that  she  will 
limit  herself  to  those  minor  comedy  parts  that  are 
so  little  appreciated  in  this  country  ?  One  ought  to 
be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the  best,  ought 
one  ?"  The  peculiar,  breathy  tone  in  which  Flavia 
always  uttered  that  word  "best,"  the  most  worn 
in  her  vocabulary,  always  jarred  on  Imogen  and 
always  made  her  obdurate. 

"I  don't  at  all  agree  with  you,"  she  said  re- 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  7 

servedly.  "I  thought  every  one  admitted  that  the 
most  remarkable  thing  about  Miss  Broaawood 
is  her  admirable  sense  of  fitness,  which  is  rare 
enough  in  her  profession." 

Flavia  could  not  endure  being  contradicted; 
she  always  seemed  to  regard  it  in  the  light  of  a  de- 
feat, and  usually  coloured  unbecomingly.  Now 
she  changed  the  subject. 

"Look,  my  dear,"  she  cried,  "there  is  Frau 
Lichtenfeld  now,  coming  to  meet  us.  Doesn't  she 
look  as  if  she  had  just  escaped  out  of  Walhalla  ? 
She  is  actually  over  six  feet." 

Imogen  saw  a  woman  of  immense  stature,  in  a 
very  short  skirt  and  a  broad,  flapping  sun  hat, 
striding  down  the  hillside  at  a  long,  swinging  gait. 
The  refugee  from  Walhalla  approached,  panting. 
Her  heavy,  Teutonic  features  were  scarlet  from 
the  rigour  of  her  exercise,  and  her  hair,  under  her 
flapping  sun  hat,  was  tightly  befrizzled  about  her 
brow.  She  fixed  her  sharp  little  eyes  upon  Imogen 
and  extended  both  her  hands. 

"So  this  is  the  little  friend?"  she  cried,  in  a 
rolling  baritone. 

Imogen  was  quite  as  tall  as  her  hostess;  but 
everything,  she  reflected,  is  comparative.  After 
the  introduction  Flavia  apologized. 


8  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"I  wish  I  could  ask  you  to  drive  up  with  us, 
Frau  Lichtenfeld." 

"Ah,  no!"  cried  the  giantess,  drooping  her 
head  in  humorous  caricature  of  a  time-honoured 
pose  of  the  heroines  of  sentimental  romances. 
"It  has  never  been  my  fate  to  be  fitted  into 
corners.  I  have  never  known  the  sweet  privileges 
of  the  tiny.' ' 

Laughing,  Flavia  started  the  ponies,  and  the 
colossal  woman,  standing  in  the  middle  of  the 
dusty  road,  took  off  her  wide  hat  and  waved  them 
a  farewell  which,  in  scope  of  gesture,  recalled  the 
salute  of  a  plumed  cavalier. 

When  they  arrived  at  the  house,  Imogen  lookea 
about  her  with  keen  curiosity,  for  this  was  verit- 
ably the  work  of  Flavia's  hands,  the  materializa- 
tion of  hopes  long  deferred.  They  passed  directly 
into  a  large,  square  hall  with  a  gallery  on  three 
sides,  studio  fashion.  This  opened  at  one  end 
into  a  Dutch  breakfast-room,  beyond  which 
was  the  large  dining-room.  At  the  other  end 
of  the  hall  was  the  music-room.  There  was  a 
smoking-room,  which  one  entered  through  the 
library  behind  the  staircase.  On  the  second  floor 
there  was  the  same  general  arrangement;  a 
square  hall,   and,   opening  from    it,   the   guest 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  9 

chambers,  or,  as  Miss  Broadwood  termed  them, 
the  "cages." 

When  Imogen  went  to  her  room,  the  guests  had 
begun  to  return  from  their  various  afternoon  ex- 
cursions. Boys  were  gliding  through  the  halls  with 
ice-water,  covered  trays,  and  flowers,  colliding 
with  maids  and  valets  who  carried  shoes  and 
other  articles  of  wearing  apparel.  Yet,  all  this  was 
done  in  response  to  inaudible  bells,  on  felt  soles, 
and  in  hushed  voices,  so  that  there  was  very  little 
confusion  about  it. 

Flavia  had  at  last  builded  her  house  and  hewn 
out  her  seven  pillars;  there  could  be  no  doubt, 
now,  that  the  asylum  for  talent,  the  sanatorium  of 
the  arts,  so  long  projected,  was  an  accomplished 
fact.  Her  ambition  had  long  ago  outgrown  the 
dimensions  of  her  house  on  Prairie  Avenue;  be- 
sides, she  had  bitterly  complained  that  in  Chica- 
go traditions  were  against  her.  Her  project  had 
been  delayed  by  Arthur's  doggedly  standing  out 
for  the  Michigan  woods,  but  Flavia  knew  well 
enough  that  certain  of  the  aves  rares  —  "the 
best"  —  could  not  be  lured  so  far  away  from  the 
seaport,  so  she  declared  herself  for  the  historic 
Hudson  and  knew  no  retreat.  The  establishing 
of  a  New  York  office  had  at  length  overthrown 


10  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Arthur's  last  valid  objection  to  quitting  the  lake 
country  for  three  months  of  the  year ;  and  Arthur 
could  be  wearied  into  anything,  as  those  who 
knew  him  knew. 

Flavia's  house  was  the  mirror  of  her  exultation ; 
it  was  a  temple  to  the  gods  of  Victory,  a  sort  of 
triumphal  arch.  In  her  earlier  days  she  had  swal- 
lowed experiences  that  would  have  unmanned 
one  of  less  torrential  enthusiasm  or  blind  pertin- 
acity. But,  of  late  years,  her  determination  had 
told;  she  saw  less  and  less  of  those  mysterious 
persons  with  mysterious  obstacles  in  their  path 
and  mysterious  grievances  against  the  world,  who 
had  once  frequented  her  house  on  Prairie  Ave- 
nue. In  the  stead  of  this  multitude  of  the  un- 
arrived,  she  had  now  the  few,  the  select,  "the 
best."  Of  all  that  band  of  indigent  retainers  who 
had  once  fed  at  her  board  like  the  suitors  in  the 
halls  of  Penelope,  only  Alcee  Buisson  still  re- 
tained his  right  of  entree.  He  alone  had  remem- 
bered that  ambition  hath  a  knapsack  at  his  back, 
wherein  he  puts  alms  to  oblivion,  and  he  alone 
had  been  considerate  enough  to  do  what  Flavia 
had  expected  of  him,  and  give  his  name  a  current 
value  in  the  world.  Then,  as  Miss  Broadwood 
put    it,    "he    was    her    first    real    one,"  —  and 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  11 

Flavia,  like  Mahomet,  could  remember  her  first 
believer. 

The  "House  of  Song,"  as  Miss  Broadwood 
had  called  it,  was  the  outcome  of  Flavia's  more 
exalted  strategies.  A  woman  who  made  less  a 
point  of  sympathizing  with  their  delicate  organ- 
isms, might  have  sought  to  plunge  these  phos- 
phorescent pieces  into  the  tepid  bath  of  domestic 
life;  but  Flavia's  discernment  was  deeper.  This 
must  be  a  refuge  where  the  shrinking  soul,  the 
sensitive  brain,  should  be  unconstrained;  where 
the  caprice  of  fancy  should  outweigh  the  civil 
code,  if  necessary.  She  considered  that  this  much 
Arthur  owed  her;  for  she,  in  her  turn,  had  made 
concessions.  Flavia,  had,  indeed,  quite  an  equip- 
ment of  epigrams  to  the  effect  that  our  century 
creates  the  iron  genii  which  evolve  its  fairy  tales : 
but  the  fact  that  her  husband's  name  was  an- 
nually painted  upon  some  ten  thousand  thresh- 
ing machines,  in  reality  contributed  very  little  to 
her  happiness. 

Arthur  Hamilton  was  born,  and  had  spent  his 
boyhood  in  the  West  Indies,  and  physically  he 
had  never  lost  the  brand  of  the  tropics.  His  fath- 
er, after  inventing  the  machine  which  bore  his 
name,  had  returned  to  the  States  to  patent  and 


12  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

manufacture  it.  After  leaving  college,  Arthur  had 
spent  five  years  ranching  in  the  West  and 
travelling  abroad.  Upon  his  father's  death 
he  had  returned  to  Chicago  and,  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  all  his  friends,  had  taken  up  the 
business, — without  any  demonstration  of  enthu- 
siasm, but  with  quiet  perseverence,  marked 
ability,  and  amazing  industry.  Why  or  how  a 
self-sufficient,  rather  ascetic  man  of  thirty,  in- 
different in  manner,  wholly  negative  in  all  other 
personal  relations,  should  have  doggedly  wooed 
and  finally  married  Flavia  Malcolm,  was  a 
problem  that  had  vexed  older  heads  than  Imo- 
gen's. 

While  Imogen  was  dressing  she  heard  a  knock 
at  her  door,  and  a  young  woman  entered  whom 
she  at  once  recognized  as  Jemima  Broadwood  — 
"Jimmy"  Broadwood,  she  was  called  by  people 
in  her  own  profession.  While  there  was  some- 
thing unmistakably  professional  in  her  frank 
savoir-faire,  "Jimmy's"  was  one  of  those  faces 
to  which  the  rouge  never  seems  to  stick.  Her  eyes 
were  keen  and  grey  as  a  windy  April  sky,  and  so 
far  from  having  been  seared  by  calcium  lights, 
you  might  have  fancied  they  had  never  looked  on 
anything  less  bucolic  than  growing  fields  and 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  13 

country  fairs.  She  wore  her  thick,  brown  hair 
short  and  parted  at  the  side;  and,  rather  than 
hinting  at  freakishness,  this  seemed  admirably  in 
keeping  with  her  fresh,  boyish  countenance.  She 
extended  to  Imogen  a  large,  well-shaped  hand 
which  it  was  a  pleasure  to  clasp. 

"Ah!  you  are  Miss  Willard,  and  I  see  I  need 
not  introduce  myself.  Flavia  said  you  were  kind 
enough  to  express  a  wish  to  meet  me,  and  I  pre- 
ferred to  meet  you  alone.  Do  you  mind  if  I 
smoke?" 

"Why,  certainly  not,"  said  Imogen,  some- 
what disconcerted  and  looking  hurriedly  about 
for  matches. 

"There,  be  calm,  I'm  always  prepared,"  said 
Miss  Broadwood,  checking  Imogen's  flurry  with 
a  soothing  gesture,  and  producing  an  oddly-fash- 
ioned silver  match-case  from  some  mysterious  re- 
cess in  her  dinner-gown.  She  sat  down  in  a  deep 
chair,  crossed  her  patent-leather  Oxfords,  and 
lit  her  cigarette.  "This  match-box,"  she  went 
on  meditatively,  "once  belonged  to  a  Prussian 
officer.  He  shot  himself  in  his  bath-tub,  and  I 
bought  it  at  the  sale  of  his  effects. " 

Imogen  had  not  yet  found  any  suitable  reply  to 
make  to  this  rather  irrelevant  confidence,  when 


14  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Miss  Broadwood  turned  to  her  cordially:  "I'm 
awfully  glad  you've  come,  Miss  Willard,  though 
I've  not  quite  decided  why  you  did  it.  I  wanted 
very  much  to  meet  you.  Flavia  gave  me  your 
thesis  to  read." 

"Why,  how  funny!"  ejaculated  Imogen. 

"On  the  contrary,"  remarked  Miss  Broad- 
wood.  "I  thought  it  decidedly  lacked  humour." 

"I  meant,"  stammered  Imogen,  beginning  to 
feel  very  much  like  Alice  in  Wonderland,  "I 
meant  that  I  thought  it  rather  strange  Mrs. 
Hamilton  should  fancy  you  would  be  interested." 

Miss  Broadwood  laughed  heartily.  "Now, 
don't  let  my  rudeness  frighten  you.  Really,  I 
found  it  very  interesting,  and  no  end  impressive. 
You  see,  most  people  in  my  profession  are  good 
for  absolutely  nothing  else,  and,  therefore,  they 
have  a  deep  and  abiding  conviction  that  in  some 
other  line  they  might  have  shone.  Strange  to  say, 
scholarship  is  the  object  of  our  envious  and  par- 
ticular admiration.  Anything  in  type  impresses 
us  greatly;  that's  why  so  many  of  us  marry  au- 
thors or  newspaper  men  and  lead  miserable 
lives."  Miss  Broadwood  saw  that  she  had  rather 
disconcerted  Imogen,  and  blithely  tacked  in 
another  direction.  "You  see,"  she  went  on,  toss- 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  15 

ing  aside  her  half -consumed  cigarette,  "some 
years  ago  Flavia  would  not  have  deemed  me 
worthy  to  open  the  pages  of  your  thesis  —  nor  to 
be  one  of  her  house  party  of  the  chosen,  for  that 
matter.  I've  Pinero  to  thank  for  both  pleasures. 
It  all  depends  on  the  class  of  business  I'm  play- 
ing whether  I'm  in  favour  or  not.  Flavia  is  my 
second  cousin,  you  know,  so  I  can  say  whatever 
disagreeable  things  I  choose  with  perfect  good 
grace.  I'm  quite  desperate  for  some  one  to  laugh 
with,  so  I'm  going  to  fasten  myself  upon  you  — 
for,  of  course,  one  can't  expect  any  of  these  gypsy- 
dago  people  to  see  anything  funny.  I  don't  intend 
you  shall  lose  the  humour  of  the  situation.  What 
do  you  think  of  Flavia's  infirmary  for  the  ails, 
anyway?" 

"Well,  it's  rather  too  soon  for  me  to  have 
any  opinion  at  all,"  said  Imogen,  as  she  again 
turned  to  her  dressing.  "So  far,  you  are  the  only 
one  of  the  artists  I've  met." 

"One  of  them?"  echoed  Miss  Broadwood. 
"  One  of  the  artists  ?  My  offence  may  be  rank,  my 
dear,  but  I  really  don't  deserve  that.  Come,  now, 
whatever  badges  of  my  tribe  I  may  bear  upon 
me,  just  let  me  divest  you  of  any  notion  that  I 
take  myself  seriously." 


16  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Imogen  turned  from  the  mirror  in  blank  aston- 
ishment, and  sat  down  on  the  arm  of  a  chair, 
facing  her  visitor.  "  I  can't  fathom  you  at  all,Miss 
Broadwood,"  she  said  frankly.  "Why  shouldn't 
you  take  yourself  seriously  ?  What's  the  use  of 
beating  about  the  bush  ?  Surely  you  know  that 
you  are  one  of  the  few  players  on  this  side  of  the 
water  who  have  at  all  the  spirit  of  natural  or  in- 
genuous comedy?" 

"Thank  you,  my  dear.  Now  we  are  quite  even 
about  the  thesis,  aren't  we  ?  Oh !  did  you  mean  it  ? 
Well,  you  are  a  clever  girl.  But  you  see  it  doesn't 
do  to  permit  oneself  to  look  at  it  in  that  light.  If 
we  do,  we  always  go  to  pieces,  and  waste  our  sub- 
stance a-starring  as  the  unhappy  daughter  of  the 
Capulets.  But  there,  I  hear  Flavia  coming  to  take 
you  down;  and  just  remember  I'm  not  one  of 
them;  the  artists,  I  mean." 

Flavia  conducted  Imogen  and  Miss  Broad- 
wood  downstairs.  iVs  they  reached  the  lower  hall 
they  heard  voices  from  the  music-room,  and  dim 
figures  were  lurking  in  the  shadows  under  the 
gallery,  but  their  hostess  led  straight  to  the  smok- 
ing-room. The  June  evening  was  chilly,  and  a 
fire  had  been  lighted  in  the  fireplace.  Through 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  17 

the  deepening  dusk  the  firelight  flickered  upon 
the  pipes  and  curious  weapons  on  the  wall,  and 
threw  an  orange  glow  over  the  Turkish  hangings. 
One  side  of  the  smoking-room  was  entirely  of 
glass,  separating  it  from  the  conservatory,  which 
was  flooded  with  white  light  from  the  electric 
bulbs.  There  was  about  the  darkened  room  some 
suggestion  of  certain  chambers  in  the  Arabian 
Nights,  opening  on  a  court  of  palms.  Perhaps  it 
was  partially  this  memory-evoking  suggestion 
that  caused  Imogen  to  start  so  violently  when  she 
saw  dimly,  in  a  blur  of  shadow,  the  figure  of  a 
man,  who  sat  smoking  in  a  low,  deep  chair  be- 
fore the  fire.  He  was  long,  and  thin,  and  brown. 
His  long,  nerveless  hands  drooped  from  the 
arms  of  his  chair.  A  brown  moustache  shaded  his 
mouth,  and  his  eyes  were  sleepy  and  apathetic. 
When  Imogen  entered,  he  rose  indolently  and 
gave  her  his  hand,  his  manner  barely  courteous. 

"I  am  glad  you  arrived  promptly,  Miss  Wil- 
lard,"  he  said  with  an  indifferent  drawl.  "Flavia 
was  afraid  you  might  be  late.  You  had  a  pleasant 
ride  up,  I  hope?" 

"O,  very,  thank  you,  Mr.  Hamilton,"  she  re- 
plied, feeling  that  he  did  not  particularly  care 
whether  she  replied  at  all. 


18  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Flavia  explained  that  she  had  not  yet  had  time 
to  dress  for  dinner,  as  she  had  been  attending  to 
Mr.  Will  Maidenwood,  who  had  become  faint 
after  hurting  his  finger  in  an  obdurate  window, 
and  immediately  excused  herself.  As  she  left, 
Hamilton  turned  to  Miss  Broadwood  with  a 
rather  spiritless  smile. 

"Well,  Jimmy,"  he  remarked,  "I  brought  up 
a  piano  box  full  of  fireworks  for  the  boys.  How 
do  you  suppose  we'll  manage  to  keep  them  until 
the  Fourth?" 

"We  can't,  unless  we  steel  ourselves  to  deny 
there  are  any  on  the  premises,"  said  Miss  Broad- 
wood,  seating  herself  on  a  low  stool  by  Hamil- 
ton's chair,  and  leaning  back  against  the  mantel. 
"Have  you  seen  Helen,  and  has  she  told  you  the 
tragedy  of  the  tooth  ?" 

"She  met  me  at  the  station,  with  her  tooth 
wrapped  up  in  tissue  paper.  I  had  tea  with  her  an 
hour  ago.  Better  sit  down,  Miss  Willard;"  he 
rose  and  pushed  a  chair  toward  Imogen,  who  was 
standing  peering  into  the  conservatory.  "  We  are 
scheduled  to  dine  at  seven,  but  they  seldom  get 
around  before  eight." 

By  this  time  Imogen  had  made  out  that  here 
the  plural  pronoun,  third  person,  always  referred 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  19 

to  the  artists.  As  Hamilton's  manner  did  not  spur 
one  to  cordial  intercourse,  and  as  his  attention 
seemed  directed  to  Miss  Broadwood,  in  so  far  as 
it  could  be  said  to  be  directed  to  any  one,  she  sat 
down  facing  the  conservatory  and  watched  him, 
unable  to  decide  in  how  far  he  was  identical  with 
the  man  who  had  first  met  Flavia  Malcolm  in 
her  mother's  house,  twelve  years  ago.  Did  he  at  all 
remember  having  known  her  as  a  little  girl,  and 
why  did  his  indifference  hurt  her  so,  after  all 
these  years  ?  Had  some  remnant  of  her  childish 
affection  for  him  gone  on  living,  somewhere  down 
in  the  sealed  caves  of  her  consciousness,  and  had 
she  really  expected  to  find  it  possible  to  be  fond  of 
him  again  ?  Suddenly  she  saw  a  light  in  the  man's 
sleepy  eyes,  an  umistakable  expression  of  interest 
and  pleasure  that  fairly  startled  her.  She  turned 
quickly  in  the  direction  of  his  glance,  and  saw 
Flavia,  just  entering,  dressed  for  dinner  and  lit 
by  the  effulgence  of  her  most  radiant  manner. 
Most  people  considered  Flavia  handsome,  and 
there  was  no  gainsaying  that  she  carried  her  five- 
and-thirty  years  splendidly.  Her  figure  had  never 
grown  matronly,  and  her  face  was  of  the  sort  that 
does  not  show  wear.  Its  blond  tints  were  as  fresh 
and  enduring  as  enamel, —  and  quite  as  hard.  Its 


20  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

usual  expression  was  one  of  tense,  often  strained, 
animation,  which  compressed  her  lips  nervously. 
A  perfect  scream  of  animation,  Miss  Broad- 
wood  had  called  it  —  created  and  maintained  by 
sheer,  indomitable  force  of  will.  Flavia's  appear- 
ance on  any  scene  whatever  made  a  ripple,  caused 
a  certain  agitation  and  recognition,  and,  among 
impressionable  people,  a  certain  uneasiness.  For 
all  her  sparkling  assurance  of  manner,  Flavia  was 
certainly  always  ill  at  ease,  and  even  more  cer- 
tainly anxious.  She  seemed  not  convinced  of  the 
established  order  of  material  things,  seemed  al- 
ways trying  to  conceal  her  feeling  that  walls 
might  crumble,  chasms  open,  or  the  fabric  of  her 
life  fly  to  the  winds  in  irretrievable  entanglement. 
At  least  this  was  the  impression  Imogen  got  from 
that  note  in  Flavia  which  was  so  manifestly 
false. 

Hamilton's  keen,  quick,  satisfied  glance  at  his 
wife  had  recalled  to  Imogen  all  her  inventory  of 
speculations  about  them.  She  looked  at  him  with 
compassionate  surprise.  As  a  child  she  had  never 
permitted  herself  to  believe  that  Hamilton  cared 
at  all  for  the  woman  who  had  taken  him  away 
from  her;  and  since  she  had  begun  to  think  about 
them  again,  it  had  never  occurred  to  her  that 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  21 

any  one  could  become  attached  to  Flavia  in  that 
deeply  personal  and  exculsive  sense.  It  seemed 
quite  as  irrational  as  trying  to  possess  oneself  of 
Broadway  at  noon. 

When  they  went  out  to  dinner,  Imogen  realized 
the  completeness  of  Flavia's  triumph.  They  were 
people  of  one  name,  mostly,  like  kings;  people 
whose  names  stirred  the  imagination  like  a 
romance  or  a  melody.  With  the  notable  exception 
of  M.  Roux,  Imogen  had  seen  most  of  them  before, 
either  in  concert  halls  or  lecture  rooms;  but  they 
looked  noticeably  older  and  dimmer  than  she  re- 
membered them. 

Opposite  her  sat  Schemetzkin,  the  Russian 
pianist,  a  short,  corpulent  man,  with  an  apoplec- 
tic face  and  purpleish  skin,  his  thick,  iron-grey 
hair  tossed  back  from  his  forehead.  Next  the 
German  giantess  sat  the  Italian  tenor  —  the 
tiniest  of  men  —  pale,  with  soft,  light  hair,  much 
in  disorder,  very  red  lips  and  fingers  yellowed 
by  cigarettes.  Frau  Lichtenfeld  shone  in  a  gown 
of  emerald  green,  fitting  so  closely  as  to  enhance 
her  natural  floridness.  However,  to  do  the  good 
lady  justice,  let  her  attire  be  never  so  modest,  it 
gave  an  effect  of  barbaric  splendour.  At  her  left 
sat  Herr  Schotte,  the  Assyriologist,  whose  features 


22  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

were  effectually  concealed  by  the  convergence  of 
his  hair  and  beard,  and  whose  glasses  were  con- 
tinually falling  into  his  plate.  This  gentleman 
had  removed  more  tons  of  earth  in  the  course  of 
his  explorations  than  had  any  of  his  confreres,  and 
his  vigorous  attack  upon  his  food  seemed  to  sug- 
gest the  strenuous  nature  of  his  accustomed  toil. 
His  eyes  were  small  and  deeply  set,  and  his  fore- 
head bulged  fiercely  above  his  eyes  in  a  bony 
ridge.  His  heavy  brows  completed  the  leonine 
suggestion  of  his  face.  Even  to  Imogen,  who  knew 
something  of  his  work  and  greatly  respected  it, 
he  was  entirely  too  reminiscent  of  the  stone  age 
to  be  altogether  an  agreeable  dinner  companion. 
He  seemed,  indeed,  to  have  absorbed  something 
of  the  savagery  of  those  early  types  of  life 
which  he  continually  studied. 

Frank  Wellington,  the  young  Kansas  man  who 
had  been  two  years  out  of  Harvard  and  had  pub- 
lished three  historical  novels,  sat  next  Mr.  Will 
Maidenwood,  who  was  still  pale  from  his  recent 
sufferings,  and  carried  his  hand  bandaged.  They 
took  little  part  in  the  general  conversation,  but, 
like  the  lion  and  the  unicorn,  were  always  at  it; 
discussing,  every  time  they  met,  whether  there 
were  or  were  not  passages  in  Mr.  Wellington's 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  23 

works  which  should  be  eliminated,  out  of  con- 
sideration for  the  Young  Person.  Wellington  had 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  great  American  syndi- 
cate which  most  effectually  befriended  struggling 
authors  whose  struggles  were  in  the  right  direc- 
tion, and  which  had  guaranteed  to  make  him 
famous  before  he  was  thirty.  Feeling  the  security 
of  his  position,  he  stoutly  defended  those  passages 
which  jarred  upon  the  sensitive  nerves  of  the 
young  editor  of  Woman.  Maidenwood,  in  the 
smoothest  of  voices,  urged  the  necessity  of  the  au- 
thor's recognizing  certain  restrictions  at  the  outset, 
and  Miss  Broadwood,  who  joined  the' argument 
quite  without  invitation  or  encouragement,  sec- 
onded him  with  pointed  and  malicious  remarks 
which  caused  the  young  editor  manifest  discom- 
fort. Restzhoff,  the  chemist,  demanded  the  atten- 
tion of  the  entire  company  for  his  exposition  of  his 
devices  for  manufacturing  ice-cream  from  vege- 
table oils,  and  for  administering  drugs  in  bonbons. 
Flavia,  always  noticeably  restless  at  dinner, 
was  somewhat  apathetic  toward  the  advocate  of 
peptonized  chocolate,  and  was  plainly  concerned 
about  the  sudden  departure  of  M.  Roux,  who  had 
announced  that  it  would  be  necessary  for  him  to 
leave  to-morrow.  M.  Emile  Roux,  who  sat  at 


24  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Flavia's  right,  was  a  man  in  middle  life  and  quite 
bald,  clearly  without  personal  vanity,  though  his 
publishers  preferred  to  circulate  only  those  of  his 
portraits  taken  in  his  ambrosial  youth.  Imogen 
was  considerably  shocked  at  his  unlikeness  to  the 
slender,  black-stocked  Rolla  he  had  looked  at 
twenty.  He  had  declined  into  the  florid,  settled 
heaviness  of  indifference  and  approaching  age. 
There  was,  however,  a  certain  look  of  durability 
and  solidity  about  him;  the  look  of  a  man  who  has 
earned  the  right  to  be  fat  and  bald,  and  even 
silent  at  dinner  if  he  chooses. 

Throughout  the  discussion  between  Welling- 
ton and  Will  Maidenwood,  though  they  invited 
his  participation,  he  remained  silent,  betraying 
no  sign  either  of  interest  or  contempt.  Since  his 
arrival  he  had  directed  most  of  his  conversation  to 
Hamilton,  who  had  never  read  one  of  his  twelve 
great  novels.  This  perplexed  and  troubled  Flavia. 
On  the  night  of  his  arrival,  Jules  Martel  had  en- 
thusiastically declared,  "There  are  schools  and 
schools,  manners  and  manners;  but  Roux  is 
Roux,  and  Paris  sets  its  watches  by  his  clock." 
Flavia  had  already  repeated  this  remark  to  Imo- 
gen. It  haunted  her,  and  each  time  she  quoted  it 
she  was  impressed  anew. 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  25 

Flavia  shifted  the  conversation  uneasily,  evi- 
dently exasperated  and  excited  by  her  repeated 
failures  to  draw  the  novelist  out.  "Monsieur 
Roux,"  she  began  abruptly,  with  her  most 
animated  smile,  "I  remember  so  well  a  state- 
ment I  read  some  years  ago  in  your  "  Mes  Etudes 
des  Femmes,"  to  the  effect  that  you  had  never  met 
a  really  intellectual  woman.  May  I  ask,  with- 
out being  impertinent,  whether  that  assertion 
still  represents  your  experience?" 

"  I  meant,  madam, "  said  the  novelist  conserva- 
tively, "intellectual  in  a  sense  very  special,  as  we 
say  of  men  in  whom  the  purely  intellectual 
functions  seem  almost  independent." 

"And  you  still  think  a  woman  so  constituted  a 
mythical  personage?"  persisted  Flavia,  nodding 
her  head  encouragingly. 

"TJne  Meduse,  madam,  who,  if  she  were  dis- 
covered, would  transmute  us  all  into  stone,"  said 
the  novelist,  bowing  gravely.  "If  she  existed  at 
all,"  he  added  deliberately,  "it  was  my  business 
to  find  her,  and  she  has  cost  me  many  a  vain  pil- 
grimage. Like  Rudel  of  Tripoli,  I  have  crossed 
seas  and  penetrated  deserts  to  seek  her  out. 
I  have,  indeed,  encountered  women  of  learning 
whose  industry  I  have  been  compelled  to  respect; 


26  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

many  who  have  possessed  beauty  and  charm  and 
perplexing  cleverness ;  a  few  with  remarkable  in- 
formation, and  a  sort  of  fatal  facility." 

"And  Mrs.  Browning,  George  Eliot,  and 
your  own  Mme.  Dudevant?"  queried  Flavia 
with  that  fervid  enthusiasm  with  which  she 
could,  on  occasion,  utter  things  simply  incom- 
prehensible for  their  banality  —  at  her  feats  of 
this  sort  Miss  Broadwood  was  wont  to  sit  breath- 
less with  admiration. 

"Madam,  while  the  intellect  was  undeniably 
present  in  the  performances  of  those  women,  it 
was  only  the  stick  of  the  rocket.  Although 
this  woman  has  eluded  me,  I  have  studied  her 
conditions  and  perturbations  as  astronomers  con- 
jecture the  orbits  of  planets  they  have  never 
seen.  If  she  exists,  she  is  probably  neither  an  ar- 
tist nor  a  woman  with  a  mission,  but  an  obscure 
personage,  with  imperative  intellectual  needs, 
who  absorbs  rather  than  produces. " 

Flavia,  still  nodding  nervously,  fixed  a  strained 
glance  of  interrogation  upon  M.  Roux.  "Then 
you  think  she  would  be  a  woman  whose  first  ne- 
cessity would  be  to  know,  whose  instincts  would 
be  satisfied  only  with  the  best,  who  could  draw 
from  others;   appreciative,  merely?" 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  27 

The  novelist  lifted  his  dull  eyes  to  his  interlocu- 
tress with  an  untranslatable  smile,  and  a  slight 
inclination  of  his  shoulders.  "Exactly  so;  you  are 
really  remarkable,  madame, "  he  added,  in  a  tone 
of  cold  astonishment. 

After  dinner  the  guests  took  their  coffee  in  the 
music-room,  where  Schemetzkin  sat  down  at  the 
piano  to  drum  rag-time,  and  give  his  celebrated 
imitation  of  the  boarding-school  girl's  execution 
of  Chopin.  He  flatly  refused  to  play  anything  more 
serious,  and  would  practise  only  in  the  morning, 
when  he  had  the  music-room  to  himself.  Hamil- 
ton and  M.  Roux  repaired  to  the  smoking-room  to 
discuss  the  necessity  of  extending  the  tax  on  man- 
ufactured articles  in  France, —  one  of  those  con- 
versations which  particularly  exasperated  Flavia. 

After  Schemetzkin  had  grimaced  and  tortured 
the  keyboard  with  malicious  vulgarities  for  half 
an  hour,  Signor  Donati,  to  put  an  end  to  his  tor- 
ture, consented  to  sing,  and  Flavia  and  Imogen 
went  to  fetch  Arthur  to  play  his  accompaniments. 
Hamilton  rose  with  an  annoyed  look,  and  placed 
his  cigarette  on  the  mantel.  "Why  yes,  Flavia, 
I'll  accompany  him,  provided  he  sings  something 
with  a  melody,  Italian  arias  or  ballads,  and  pro- 
vided the  recital  is  not  interminable." 


28  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"You  will  join  us,  M.  Roux?" 

"  Thank  you,  but  I  have  some  letters  to  write, " 
replied  the  novelist  bowing. 

As  Flavia  had  remarked  to  Imogen,  "Arthur 
really  played  accompaniments  remarkably  well." 
To  hear  him  recalled  vividly  the  days  of  her  child- 
hood, when  he  always  used  to  spend  his  business 
vacations  at  her  mother's  home  in  Maine.  He 
had  possessed  for  her  that  almost  hypnotic  in- 
fluence which  young  men  sometimes  exert  upon 
little  girls.  It  was  a  sort  of  phantom  love  affair, 
subjective  and  fanciful,  a  precocity  of  instinct,  like 
that  tender  and  maternal  concern  which  some 
little  girls  feel  for  their  dolls.  Yet  this  childish 
infatuation  is  capable  of  all  the  depressions  and 
exaltations  of  love  itself;  it  has  its  bitter  jealous- 
ies, cruel  disappointments,  its  exacting  caprices. 

Summer  after  summer  she  had  awaited  his 
coming  and  wept  at  his  departure,  indifferent  to 
the  gayer  young  men  who  had  called  her  their 
sweetheart,  and  laughed  at  everything  she  said. 
Although  Hamilton  never  said  so,  she  had  been 
always  quite  sure  that  he  was  fond  of  her.  When 
he  pulled  her  up  the  river  to  hunt  for  fairy 
knolls  shut  about  by  low,  hanging  willows,  he 
was  often  silent  for  an  hour  at  a  time,  yet  she 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  29 

never  felt  that  he  was  bored  or  was  neglecting  her. 
He  would  lie  in  the  sand  smoking,  his  eyes  half 
closed,  watching  her  play  and  she  was  always 
conscious  that  she  was  entertaining  him.  Some- 
times he  would  take  a  copy  of  "Alice  in  Wonder- 
land" in  his  pocket,  and  no  one  could  read  it  as 
he  could,  laughing  at  her  with  his  dark  eyes, 
when  anything  amused  him.  No  one  else  could 
laugh  so,  with  just  their  eyes,  and  without  moving 
a  muscle  of  their  face.  Though  he  usually  smiled 
at  passages  that  seemed  not  at  all  funny  to  the 
child,  she  always  laughed  gleefully,  because  he 
was  so  seldom  moved  to  mirth  that  any  such  de- 
monstration delighted  her  and  she  took  the  credit 
of  it  entirely  to  herself.  Her  own  inclination  had 
been  for  serious  stories,  with  sad  endings,  like 
the  Little  Mermaid,  which  he  had  once  told  her 
in  an  unguarded  moment  when  she  had  a  cold, 
and  was  put  to  bed  early  on  her  birthday  night  and 
cried  because  she  could  not  have  her  party.  But 
he  highly  disapproved  of  this  preference,  and  had 
called  it  a  morbid  taste,  and  always  shook  his 
finger  at  her  when  she  asked  for  the  story.  When 
she  had  been  particularly  good,  or  particularly 
neglected  by  other  people,  then  he  would  some- 
times melt  and  tell  her  the  story,  and  never  laugh 


30  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

at  her  if  she  enjoyed  the  "sad  ending"  even  to 
tears.  When  Flavia  had  taken  him  away  and  he 
came  no  more,  she  wept  inconsolably  for  the 
space  of  two  weeks,  and  refused  to  learn  her 
lessons.  Then  she  found  the  story  of  the  Little 
Mermaid  herself,  and  forgot  him. 

Imogen  had  discovered  at  dinner  that  he  could 
still  smile  at  one  secretly,  out  of  his  eyes,  and  that 
he  had  the  old  manner  of  outwardly  seeming 
bored,  but  letting  you  know  that  he  was  not.  She 
was  intensely  curious  about  his  exact  state  of 
feeling  toward  his  wife,  and  more  curious  still  to 
catch  a  sense  of  his  final  adjustment  to  the  con- 
ditions of  life  in  general.  This,  she  could  not  help 
feeling,  she  might  get  again  —  if  she  could  have 
him  alone  for  an  hour,  in  some  place  where  there 
was  a  little  river  and  a  sandy  cove  bordered  by 
drooping  willows,  and  a  blue  sky  seen  through 
white  sycamore  boughs. 

That  evening,  before  retiring,  Flavia  entered 
her  husband's  room,  where  he  sat  in  his  smoking- 
jacket,  in  one  of  his  favourite  low  chairs. 

"I  suppose  it's  a  grave  responsibility  to  bring 
an  ardent,  serious  young  thing  like  Imogen  here 
among  all  these  fascinating  personages,"  she  re- 
marked reflectively.  "But,  after  all,  one  can  never 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  31 

tell.  These  grave,  silent  girls  have  their  own 
charm,  even  for  facile  people." 

"O,  so  that  is  your  plan?"  queried  her  hus- 
band dryly.  "I  was  wondering  why  you  got  her 
up  here.  She  doesn't  seem  to  mix  well  with  the 
faciles.  At  least,  so  it  struck  me." 

Flavia  paid  no  heed  to  this  jeering  remark,  but 
repeated,  "No,  after  all,  it  may  not  be  a  bad 
thing." 

"Then  do  consign  her  to  that  shaken  reed,  the 
tenor,"  said  her  husband  yawning.  "I  remember 
she  used  to  have  a  taste  for  the  pathetic. " 

"And  then,"  remarked  Flavia  coquettishly, 
"  after  all,  I  owe  her  mother  a  return  in  kind.  She 
was  not  afraid  to  trifle  with  destiny. " 

But  Hamilton  was  asleep  in  his  chair. 

Next  morning  Imogen  found  only  Miss  Broad- 
wood  in  the  breakfast-room. 

"Good-morning,  my  dear  girl,  whatever  are 
you  doing  up  so  early  ?  They  never  breakfast  be- 
fore eleven.  Most  of  them  take  their  coffee  in  their 
room.     Take  this  place  by  me." 

Miss  Broadwood  looked  particularly  fresh  and 
encouraging  in  her  blue  serge  walking-skirt,  her 
open  jacket  displaying  an  expanse  of  stiff,  white, 


32  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

shirt  bosom,  dotted  with  some  almost  impercepti- 
ble figure,  and  a  dark  blue-and-white  necktie, 
neatly  knotted  under  her  wide,  rolling  collar.  She 
wore  a  white  rosebud  in  the  lapel  of  her  coat,  and 
decidedly  she  seemed  more  than  ever  like  a  nice, 
clean  boy  on  his  holiday.  Imogen  was  just  hoping 
that  they  would  breakfast  alone  when  Miss 
Broadwood  exclaimed,  "Ah,  there  comes  Arthur 
with  the  children.  That's  the  reward  of  early  ris- 
ing in  this  house;  you  never  get  to  see  the  young- 
sters at  any  other  time." 

Hamilton  entered,  followed  by  two  dark, 
handsome  little  boys.  The  girl,  who  was  very  tiny, 
blonde  like  her  mother,  and  exceedingly  frail,  he 
carried  in  his  arms.  The  boys  came  up  and  said 
good-morning  with  an  ease  and  cheerfulness  un- 
common, even  in  well-bred  children,  but  the  little 
girl  hid  her  face  on  her  father's  shoulder. 

"She's  a  shy  little  lady,"  he  explained,  as  he 
put  her  gently  down  in  her  chair.  "I'm  afraid 
she's  like  her  father;  she  can't  seem  to  get  used 
to  meeting  people.  And  you,  Miss  Willard,  did 
you  dream  of  the  white  rabbit  or  the  little  mer- 
maid?" 

"O,  I  dreamed  of  them  all!  All  the  personages 
of  that  buried  civilization,"  cried  Imogen,  de- 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  33 

lighted  that  his  estranged  manner  of  the  night 
before  had  entirely  vanished,  and  feeling  that, 
somehow,  the  old  confidential  relations  had  been 
restored  during  the  night. 

"Come,  William,"  said  Miss  Broadwood, 
turning  to  the  younger  of  the  two  boys,  "and 
what  did  you  dream  about?" 

"We  dreamed,"  said  William  gravely  —  he 
was  the  more  assertive  of  the  two  and  always 
spoke  for  both  —  "we  dreamed  that  there  were 
fireworks  hidden  in  the  basement  of  the  carriage- 
house;  lots  and  lots  of  fireworks." 

His  elder  brother  looked  up  at  him  with  ap- 
prehensive astonishment,  while  Miss  Broad- 
wood  hastily  put  her  napkin  to  her  lips,  and 
Hamilton  dropped  his  eyes.  "  If  little  boys  dream 
things,  they  are  so  apt  not  to  come  true,"  he  re- 
flected sadly.  This  shook  even  the  redoubtable 
William,  and  he  glanced  nervously  at  his  brother. 
"But  do  things  vanish  just  because  they  have 
been  dreamed?"  he  objected. 

"Generally  that  is  the  very  best  reason  for 
their  vanishing,"  said  Arthur  gravely. 

"But,  father,  people  can't  help  what  they 
dream,"  remonstrated  Edward  gently. 

"Oh,   come!   You're   making  these   children 


34  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

talk  like  a  Maeterlinck  dialogue,"  laughed  Miss 
Broadwood. 

Flavia  presently  entered,  a  book  in  her  hand, 
and  bade  them  all  good-morning.  "Come,  little 
people,  which  story  shall  it  be  this  morning  ?"  she 
asked  winningly.  Greatly  excited,  the  children 
followed  her  into  the  garden.  "She  does  then, 
sometimes,"  murmured  Imogen  as  they  left  the 
breakfast-room. 

"Oh,  yes,  to  be  sure,"  said  Miss  Broadwood 
cheerfully.  "She  reads  a  story  to  them  every 
morning  in  the  most  picturesque  part  of  the  gar- 
den. The  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  you  know.  She 
does  so  long,  she  says,  for  the  time  when  they  will 
be  intellectual  companions  for  her.  What  do  you 
say  to  a  walk  over  the  hills  ?" 

As  they  left  the  house  they  met  Frau  Lichten- 
f eld  and  the  bushy  Herr  Schotte  —  the  professor 
cut  an  astonishing  figure  in  golf  stockings  —  re- 
turning from  a  walk  and  engaged  in  an  animated 
conversation  on  the  tendencies  of  German  fiction. 

"Aren't  they  the  most  attractive  little  children," 
exclaimed  Imogen  as  they  wound  down  the  road 
toward  the  river. 

"Yes,  and  you  must  not  fail  to  tell  Flavia  that 
you  think  so.  She  will  look  at  you  in  a  sort  of 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  35 

startled  way  and  say,  'Yes,  aren't  they?'  and 
maybe  she  will  go  off  and  hunt  them  up  and  have 
tea  with  them,  to  fully  appreciate  them.  She  is 
awfully  afraid  of  missing  anything  good,  is  Fla- 
via.  The  way  those  youngsters  manage  to  conceal 
their  guilty  presence  in  the  House  of  Song  is  a 
wonder." 

"But  don't  any  of  the  artist-folk  fancy  child- 
ren?" asked  Imogen. 

"  Yes,  they  just  fancy  them  and  no  more.  The 
chemist  remarked  the  other  day  that  children  are 
like  certain  salts  which  need  not  be  actualized 
because  the  formulae  are  quite  sufficient  for  prac- 
tical purposes.  I  don't  see  how  even  Flavia  can 
endure  to  have  that  man  about. " 

"I  have  always  been  rather  curious  to  know 
what  Arthur  thinks  of  it  all,"  remarked  Imogen 
cautiously. 

"Thinks  of  it!"  ejaculated  Miss  Broadwood. 
"Why,  my  dear,  what  would  any  man  think  of 
having  his  house  turned  into  an  hotel,  habited  by 
freaks  who  discharge  his  servants,  borrow  his 
money,  and  insult  his  neighbours  ?  This  place  is 
shunned  like  a  lazaretto!" 

"Well,  then,  why  does  he  —  why  does  he  —  ' 
persisted  Imogen. 


36  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"Bah!"  interrupted  Miss  Broadwood  impa- 
tiently, "  why  did  he  in  the  first  place  ?  That's  the 
question." 

"Marry  her,  you  mean?"  said  Imogen  col- 
ouring. 

"Exactly  so,"  said  Miss  Broadwood  sharply, 
as  she  snapped  the  lid  of  her  match-box. 

"I  suppose  that  is  a  question  rather  beyond  us, 
and  certainly  one  which  we  cannot  discuss, "  said 
Imogen.  "  But  his  toleration  on  this  one  point  puz- 
zles me,  quite  apart  from  other  complications." 

"Toleration?  Why  this  point,  as  you  call  it, 
simply  is  Flavia.  Who  could  conceive  of  her  with- 
out it  ?  I  don't  know  where  it's  all  going  to  end, 
I'm  sure,  and  I'm  equally  sure  that,  if  it  were  not 
for  Arthur,  I  shouldn't  care,"  declared  Miss 
Broadwood,  drawing  her  shoulders  together. 

"But  will  it  end  at  all,  now?" 

"  Such  an  absurd  state  of  things  can't  go  on  in- 
definitely. A  man  isn't  going  to  see  his  wife  make 
a  guy  of  herself  forever,  is  he  ?  Chaos  has  already 
begun  in  the  servants'  quarters.  There  are  six  dif- 
ferent languages  spoken  there  now.  You  see,  it's 
all  on  an  entirely  false  basis.  Flavia  hasn't  the 
slightest  notion  of  what  these  people  are  really 
like,  their  good  and  their  bad  alike  escape  her. 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  37 

They,  on  the  other  hand,  can't  imagine  what  she 
is  driving  at.  Now,  Arthur  is  worse  off  than  either 
faction ;  he  is  not  in  the  fairy  story  in  that  he  sees 
these  people  exactly  as  they  are,  but  he  is  utterly 
unable  to  see  Flavia  as  they  see  her.  There  you 
have  the  situation.  Why  can't  he  see  her  as  we  do  ? 
My  dear,  that  has  kept  me  awake  o'  nights.  This 
man  who  has  thought  so  much  and  lived  so 
much,  who  is  naturally  a  critic,  really  takes  Fla- 
via at  very  nearly  her  own  estimate.  But  now  I 
am  entering  upon  a  wilderness.  From  a  brief  ac- 
quaintance with  her,  you  can  know  nothing  of 
the  icy  fastnesses  of  Flavia's  self-esteem.  It's  like 
St.  Peter's;  you  can't  realize  its  magnitude  at 
once.  You  have  to  grow  into  a  sense  of  it  by  living 
under  its  shadow.  It  has  perplexed  even  Emil 
Roux,  that  merciless  dissector  of  egoism.  She  has 
puzzled  him  the  more  because  he  saw  at  a  glance 
what  some  of  them  do  not  perceive  at  once,  and 
what  will  be  mercifully  concealed  from  Arthur 
until  the  trump  sounds ;  namely,  that  all  Flavia's 
artists  have  done  or  ever  will  do  means  exactly 
as  much  to  her  as  a  symphony  means  to  an  oyster; 
that  there  is  no  bridge  by  which  the  significance 
of  any  work  of  art  could  be  conveyed  to  her. " 
"Then,  in  the  name  of  goodness,  why  does  she 


38  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

bother  ?"  gasped  Imogen. "  She  is  pretty,  wealthy, 
well-established;  why  should  she  bother  ?" 

"That's  what  M.  Roux  has  kept  asking  him- 
self. I  can't  pretend  to  analyse  it.  She  reads 
papers  on  the'  Literary  Landmarks  of  Paris, 
and  the  Loves  of  the  Poets,  and  that  sort  of  thing, 
to  clubs  out  in  Chicago.  To  Flavia  it  is  more  neces- 
sary to  be  called  clever  than  to  breathe.  I  would 
give  a  good  deal  to  know  that  glum  Frenchman's 
diagnosis.  He  has  been  watching  her  out  of  those 
fishy  eyes  of  his  as  a  biologist  watches  a  hemis- 
phereless  frog." 

For  several  days  after  M.  Roux's  departure, 
Flavia  gave  an  embarrassing  share  of  her  atten- 
tion to  Imogen.  Embarrassing,  because  Imogen 
had  the  feeling  of  being  energetically  and  futily 
explored,  she  knew  not  for  what.  She  felt  herself 
under  the  globe  of  an  air  pump,  expected  to  yield 
up  something.  When  she  confined  the  conversa- 
tion to  matters  of  general  interest,  Flavia  con- 
veyed to  her  with  some  pique  that  her  one  en- 
deavour in  life  had  been  to  fit  herself  to  converse 
with  her  friends  upon  those  things  which  vitally 
interested  them.  "  One  has  no  right  to  accept  their 
best  from  people  unless  one  gives,  isn't  it  so  ?  I 
want  to  be  able  to  give  — !"  she  declared  vague- 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  39 

ly.  Yet  whenever  Imogen  strove  to  pay  her  tithes 
and  plunged  bravely  into  her  plans  for  study 
next  winter,  Flavia  grew  absent-minded  and  in- 
terrupted her  by  amazing  generalizations  or  by 
such  embarrassing  questions  as,  "And  these 
grim  studies  really  have  charm  for  you;  you  are 
quite  buried  in  them;  they  make  other  things 
seem  light  and  ephemeral ?" 

"I  rather  feel  as  though  I  had  got  in  here  un- 
der false  pretences,"  Imogen  confided  to  Miss 
Broadwood,  "I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what  it  is 
that  she  wants  of  me." 

"Ah,"  chuckled  Jemima,  "you  are  not  equal 
to  these  heart  to  heart  talks  with  Flavia.  You  ut- 
terly fail  to  communicate  to  her  the  atmosphere 
of  that  untroubled  joy  in  which  you  dwell.  You 
must  remember  that  she  gets  no  feeling  out  of 
things  herself,  and  she  demands  that  you  impart 
yours  to  her  by  some  process  of  psychic  trans- 
mission. I  once  met  a  blind  girl,  blind  from 
birth,  who  could  discuss  the  peculiarities  of  the 
Barbizon  school  with  just  Flavia's  glibness  and 
enthusiasm.  Ordinarily  Flavia  knows  how  to  get 
what  she  wants  from  people,  and  her  memory 
is  wonderful.  One  evening  I  heard  her  giving 
Frau  Lichtenf eld  some  random  impressions  about 


40  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Hedda  Gabler  which  she  extracted  from  me  five 
years  ago ;  giving  them  with  an  impassioned  con- 
viction of  which  I  was  never  guilty.  But  I  have 
known  other  people  who  could  appropriate  your 
stories  and  opinions;  Flavia  is  infinitely  more 
subtile  than  that ;  she  can  soak  up  the  very  thrash 
and  drift  of  your  day  dreams,  and  take  the  very 
thrills  off  your  back,  as  it  were." 

After  some  days  of  unsuccessful  effort,  Flavia 
withdrew  herself,  and  Imogen  found  Hamilton 
ready  to  catch  her  when  she  was  tossed  a-field. 
He  seemed  only  to  have  been  awaiting  this  crisis, 
and  at  once  their  old  intimacy  re-established  it- 
self as  a  thing  inevitable  and  beautifully  prepared 
for.  She  convinced  herself  that  she  had  not  been 
mistaken  in  him,  despite  all  the  doubts  that  had 
come  up  in  later  years,  and  this  renewal  of  faith 
set  more  than  one  question  thumping  in  her 
brain.  "How  did  he,  how  can  he?"  she  kept  re- 
peating with  a  tinge  of  her  childish  resentment, 
"what  right  had  he  to  waste  anything  so  fine?" 

When  Imogen  and  Arthur  were  returning  from 
a  walk  before  luncheon  one  morning  about  a 
week  after  M.  Roux's  departure,  they  noticed 
an    absorbed    group    before    one    of    the    hall 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  41 

windows.  Herr  Schotte  and  Restzhoff  sat  on  the 
window  seat  with  a  newspaper  between  them, 
while  Wellington,  Schemetzkin  and  Will  Maiden- 
wood  looked  over  their  shoulders.  They  seemed 
intensely  interested,  Herr  Schotte  occasionally 
pounding  his  knees  with  his  fists  in  ebullitions  of 
barbaric  glee.  When  Imogen  entered  the  hall, 
however,  the  men  were  all  sauntering  toward  the 
breakfast-room  and  the  paper  was  lying  inno- 
cently on  the  divan.  During  luncheon  the  per- 
sonnel of  that  window  group  were  unwontedly 
animated  and  agreeable, —  all  save  Schemetzkin, 
whose  stare  was  blanker  than  ever,  as  though 
Roux's  mantle  of  insulting  indifference  had  fallen 
upon  him,  in  addition  to  his  own  oblivious  self 
absorption.  Will  Maidenwood  seemed  embar- 
rassed and  annoyed;  the  chemist  employed  him- 
self with  making  polite  speeches  to  Hamilton.  — 
Flavia  did  not  come  down  to  lunch  —  and  there 
was  a  malicious  gleam  under  Herr  Schotte's  eye- 
brows. Frank  Wellington  announced  nervously 
that  an  imperative  letter  from  his  protecting 
syndicate  summoned  him  to  the  city. 

After  luncheon  the  men  went  to  the  golf 
links,  and  Imogen,  at  the  first  opportunity,  pos- 
sessed herself  of  the  newspaper  which  had  been 


42  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

left  on  the  divan.  One  of  the  first  things  that 
caught  her  eye  was  an  article  headed  "Roux  on 
Tuft  Hunters ;  The  Advanced  American  Woman 
As  He  Sees  Her;  Aggressive,  Superficial  and 
Insincere."  The  entire  interview  was  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  a  satiric  characterization  of 
Flavia,  a-quiver  with  irritation  and  vitriolic 
malice.  No  one  could  mistake  it;  it  was  done  with 
all  his  deftness  of  portraiture.  Imogen  had  not 
finished  the  article  when  she  heard  a  footstep, 
and  clutching  the  paper  she  started  precipitately 
toward  the  stairway  as  Arthur  [entered.  He  put 
out  his  hand,  looking  critically  at  her  distressed 
face. 

"Wait  a  moment,  Miss  Willard,"  he  said  per- 
emptorily, "I  want  to  see  whether  we  can  find 
what  it  was  that  so  interested  our  friends  this 
morning.  Give  me  the  paper,  please." 

Imogen  grew  quite  white  as  he  opened  the 
journal.  She  reached  forward  and  crumpled  it 
with  her  hands.  "Please  don't,  please  don't," 
she  pleaded,  "it's  something  I  don't  want  you 
to  see.  Oh!  why  will  you?  It's  just  something 
low  and  despicable  that  you  can't  notice." 

Arthur  had  gently  loosed  her  hands  and  he 
pointed  her  to  a  chair.  He  lit  a  cigar  and  read  the 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  43 

article  through  without  comment.  When  he  had 
finished  it,  he  walked  to  the  fireplace,  struck  a 
match,  and  tossed  the  flaming  journal  between 
the  brass  andirons. 

"You  are  right,"  he  remarked  as  he  came 
back,  dusting  his  hands  with  his  handkerchief. 
"  It's  quite  impossible  to  comment.  There  are 
extremes  of  blackguardism  for  which  we  have  no 
name.  The  only  thing  necessary  is  to  see  that 
Flavia  gets  no  wind  of  this.  This  seems  to  be  my 
cue  to  act;  poor  girl." 

Imogen  looked  at  him  tearfully;  she  could 
only  murmur,  "  Oh,  why  did  you  read  it! " 

Hamilton  laughed  spiritlessly.  "Come,  don't 
you  worry  about  it.  You  always  took  other  peo- 
ple's troubles  too  seriously.  When  you  were  little 
and  all  the  world  was  gay  and  everybody  happy, 
you  must  needs  get  the  Little  Mermaid's  troubles 
to  grieve  over.  Come  with  me  into  the  music- 
room.  You  remember  the  musical  setting  I  once 
made  you  for  the  Lay  of  the  Jabberwock  ?  I  was 
trying  it  over  the  other  night,  long  after  you  were 
in  bed,  and  I  decided  it  was  quite  as  fine  as  the 
Erl-King  music.  How  I  wish  I  could  give  you 
some  of  the  cake  that  Alice  ate  and  make  you  a 
little  girl  again.  Then,  when  you  had  got  through 


44  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

the  glass  door  into  the  little  garden,  you  could 
call  to  me,  perhaps,  and  tell  me  all  the  fine 
things  that  were  going  on  there.  What  a  pity  it  is 
that  you  ever  grew  up!"  he  added,  laughing, 
and  Imogen,  too,  was  thinking  just  that. 

At  dinner  that  evening,  Flavia,  with  fatal  per- 
sistence, insisted  upon  turning  the  conversation 
to  M.  Roux.  She  had  been  reading  one  of  his 
novels  and  had  remembered  anew  that  Paris  set 
its  watches  by  his  clock.  Imogen  surmised  that 
she  was  tortured  by  a  feeling  that  she  had  not 
sufficiently  appreciated  him  while  she  had  had 
him.  When  she  first  mentioned  his  name,  she 
was  answered  only  by  the  pall  of  silence  that  fell 
over  the  company.  Then  every  one  began  to  talk 
at  once,  as  though  to  correct  a  false  position. 
They  spoke  of  him  with  a  fervid,  defiant  ad- 
miration, with  the  sort  of  hot  praise  that  covers 
a  double  purpose.  Imogen  fancied  she  could 
see.  that  they  felt  a  kind  of  relief  at  what  the 
man  had  done,  even  those  who  despised  him  for 
doing  it;  that  they  felt  a  spiteful  heat  against 
Flavia,  as  though  she  had  tricked  them,  and  a 
certain  contempt  for  themselves  that  they  had 
been  beguiled.  She  was  reminded  of  the  fury 
of  the  crowd  in  the  fairy  tale,  when  once  the 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  45 

child  had  called  out  that  the  king  was  in  his 
night-clothes.  Surely  these  people  knew  no  more 
about  Flavia  than  they  had  known  before,  but 
the  mere  fact  that  the  thing  had  been  said,  al- 
tered the  situation.  Flavia,  meanwhile,  sat  chat- 
tering amiably,  pathetically  unconscious  of  her 
nakedness. 

Hamilton  lounged,  fingering  the  stem  of  his 
wine  glass,  gazing  down  the  table  at  one  face 
after  another  and  studying  the  various  degrees 
of  self-consciousness  they  exhibited.  Imogen's 
eyes  followed  his,  fearfully.  When  a  lull  came  in 
the  spasmodic  flow  of  conversation,  Arthur, 
leaning  back  in  his  chair,  remarked  deliber- 
ately, "  As  for  M.  Roux,  his  very  profession  places 
him  in  that  class  of  men  whom  society  has  never 
been  able  to  accept  unconditionally  because  it 
has  never  been  able  to  assume  that  they  have  any 
ordered  notion  of  taste.  He  and  his  ilk  remain, 
with  the  mountebanks  and  snake  charmers,  peo- 
ple indispensable  to  our  civilization,  but  wholly 
unreclaimed  by  it;  people  whom  we  receive,  but 
whose  invitations  we  do  not  accept." 

Fortunately  for  Flavia,  this  mine  was  not  ex- 
ploded until  just  before  the  coffee  was  brought. 
Her   laughter   was    pitiful   to    hear;    it   echoed 


46  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

through  the  silent  room  as  in  a  vault,  while  she 
made  some  tremulously  light  remark  about  her 
husband's  drollery,  grim  as  a  jest  from  the  dying. 
No  one  responded  and  she  sat  nodding  her  head 
like  a  mechanical  toy  and  smiling  her  white,  set 
smile  through  her  teeth,  until  Alcee  Buisson  and 
Frau  Lichtenfeld  came  to  her  support. 

After  dinner  the  guests  retired  immediately  to 
their  rooms,  and  Imogen  went  upstairs  on  tip- 
toe, feeling  the  echo  of  breakage  and  the  dust  of 
crumbling  in  the  air.  She  wondered  whether 
Flavia's  habitual  note  of  uneasiness  were  not,  in 
a  manner,  prophetic,  and  a  sort  of  unconscious 
premonition,  after  all.  She  sat  down  to  write  a 
letter,  but  she  found  herself  so  nervous,  her  head 
so  hot  and  her  hands  so  cold,  that  she  soon 
abandoned  the  effort.  Just  as  she  was  about  to 
seek  Miss  Broadwood,  Flavia  entered  and  em- 
braced her  hysterically. 

"My  dearest  girl,"  she  began,  "was  there 
ever  such  an  unfortunate  and  incomprehensible 
speech  made  before?  Of  course  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  explain  to  you  poor  Arthur's  lack  of 
tact,  and  that  he  meant  nothing.  But  they!  Can 
they  be  expected  to  understand  ?  He  will  feel 
wretchedly  about  it  when  he  realizes  what  he  has 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  47 

done,  but  in  the  meantime  ?  And  M.  Roux,  of  all 
men!  When  we  were  so  fortunate  as  to  get  him, 
and  he  made  himself  so  unreservedly  agreeable, 
and  I  fancied  that,  in  his  way,  Arthur  quite  ad- 
mired him.  My  dear,  you  have  no  idea  what 
that  speech  has  done.  Schemetzkin  and  Herr 
Schotte  have  already  sent  me  word  that  they 
must  leave  us  to-morrow.  Such  a  thing  from  a 
host!"  Flavia  paused,  choked  by  tears  of  vexa- 
tion and  despair. 

Imogen  was  thoroughly  disconcerted;  this  was 
the  first  time  she  had  ever  seen  Flavia  betray  any 
personal  emotion  which  was  indubitably  gen- 
uine. She  replied  with  what  consolation  she 
could.  "Need  they  take  it  personally  at  all?  It 
was  a  mere  observation  upon  a  class  of  peo- 
ple — " 

"Which  he  knows  nothing  whatever  about, 
and  with  whom  he  has  no  sympathy,"  inter- 
rupted Flavia.  "Ah,  my  dear,  you  could  not  be 
expected  to  understand.  You  can't  realize,  know- 
ing Arthur  as  you  do,  his  entire  lack  of  any 
aesthetic  sense  whatever.  He  is  absolutely  nil, 
stone  deaf  and  stark  blind,  on  that  side.  He 
doesn't  mean  to  be  brutal,  it  is  just  the  brutality 
of  utter  ignorance.  They  always  feel  it  —  they  are 


48  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

so  sensitive  to  unsympathetic  influences,  you 
know;  they  know  it  the  moment  they  come  into 
the  house.  I  have  spent  my  life  apologizing  for 
him  and  struggling  to  conceal  it;  but  in  spite  of 
me,  he  wounds  them;  his  very  attitude,  even  in 
silence,  offends  them.  Heavens!  do  I  not  know, 
is  it  not  perpetually  and  forever  wounding  me  ? 
But  there  has  never  been  anything  so  dreadful 
as  this,  never!  If  I  could  conceive  of  any  possible 
motive,  even!" 

"But,  surely,  Mrs.  Hamilton,  it  was,  after  all, 
a  mere  expression  of  opinion,  such  as  we  are 
any  of  us  likely  to  venture  upon  any  subject 
whatever.  It  was  neither  more  personal  nor 
more  extravagant  than  many  of  M.  Roux's 
remarks." 

"But,  Imogen,  certainly  M.  Roux  has  the 
right.  It  is  a  part  of  his  art,  and  that  is  altogther 
another  matter.  Oh,  this  is  not  the  only  in- 
stance!" continued  Flavia  passionately,  "I've 
always  had  that  narrow,  bigoted  prejudice  to  con- 
tend with.  It  has  always  held  me  back.  But 
this—!" 

"I  think  you  mistake  his  attitude,"  replied 
Imogen,  feeling  a  flush  that  made  her  ears  tingle, 
"that  is,  I  fancy  he  is  more  appreciative  than  he 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  49 

seems.  A  man  can't  be  very  demonstrative  about 
those  things  —  not  if  he  is  a  real  man.  I  should 
not  think  you  would  care  much  about  saving  the 
feelings  of  people  who  are  too  narrow  to  admit  of 
any  other  point  of  view  than  their  own."  She 
stopped,  finding  herself  in  the  impossible  position 
of  attempting  to  explain  Hamilton  to  his  wife ;  a 
task  which,  if  once  begun,  would  necessitate  an 
entire  course  of  enlightenment  which  she  doubted 
Flavia's  ability  to  receive,  and  which  she  could 
offer  only  with  very  poor  grace. 

"That's  just  where  it  stings  most,"  here  Fla- 
via  began  pacing  the  floor,  "it  is  just  because 
they  have  all  shown  such  tolerance,  and  have 
treated  Arthur  with  such  unfailing  consideration, 
that  I  can  find  no  reasonable  pretext  for  his 
rancour.  How  can  he  fail  to  see  the  value  of  such 
friendships  on  the  children's  account,  if  for  noth- 
ing else !  What  an  advantage  for  them  to  grow  up 
among  such  associations!  Even  though  he  cares 
nothing  about  these  things  himself  he  might 
realize  that.  Is  there  nothing  I  could  say  by 
way  of  explanation  ?  To  them,  I  mean  ?  If  some 
one  were  to  explain  to  them  how  unfortunately 
limited  he  is  in  these  things  — " 

"I'm  afraid  I  cannot  advise  you,"  said  Imo- 


50  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

gen  decidedly,  "but  that,  at  least,  seems  to  me 
impossible." 

Flavia  took  her  hand  and  glanced  at  her  af- 
fectionately, nodding  nervously.  "Of  course, 
dear  girl,  I  can't  ask  you  to  be  quite  frank  with 
me.  Poor  child,  you  are  trembling  and  your 
hands  are  icy.  Poor  Arthur!  But  you  must  not 
judge  him  by  this  altogether;  think  how  much  he 
misses  in  life.  What  a  cruel  shock  you've  had. 
I'll  send  you  some  sherry.  Good-night,  my  dear." 

When  Flavia  shut  the  door,  Imogen  burst 
into  a  fit  of  nervous  weeping. 

Next  morning  she  awoke  after  a  troubled  and 
restless  night.  At  eight  o'clock  Miss  Broadwood 
entered  in  a  red  and  white  striped  bath-robe. 

"Up,  up,  and  see  the  great  doom's  image!" 
she  cried,  her  eyes  sparkling  with  excitement. 
"The  hall  is  full  of  trunks,  they  are  packing. 
What  bolt  has  fallen  ?  It's  you,  ma  cherie,  you've 
brought  Ulysses  home  again  and  the  slaughter 
has  begun!"  she  blew  a  cloud  of  smoke  trium- 
phantly from  her  lips  and  threw  herself  into  a 
chair  beside  the  bed. 

Imogen,  rising  on  her  elbow,  plunged  excitedly 
into  the  story  of  the  Roux  interview,  which  Miss 
Broadwood    heard    with    the    keenest    interest, 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  51 

frequently  interrupting  her  by  exclamations  of 
delight.  When  Imogen  reached  the  dramatic 
scene  which  terminated  in  the  destruction  of  the 
newspaper,  Miss  Broadwood  rose  and  took  a 
turn  about  the  room,  violently  switching  the 
tasselled  cords  of  her  bath- robe. 

"Stop  a  moment,"  she  cried,  "you  mean  to 
tell  me  that  he  had  such  a  heaven-sent  means 
to  bring  her  to  her  senses  and  didn't  use  it,  that 
he  held  such  a  weapon  and  threw  it  away?" 

"Use  it?"  cried  Imogen  unsteadily,  "of 
course  he  didn't!  He  bared  his  back  to  the  tor- 
mentor, signed  himself  over  to  punishment  in 
that  speech  he  made  at  dinner,  which  every  one 
understands  but  Flavia.  She  was  here  for  an 
hour  last  night  and  disregarded  every  limit  of 
taste  in  her  maledictions." 

"My  dear!"  cried  Miss  Broadwood,  catching 
her  hand  in  inordinate  delight  at  the  situation, 
"do  you  see  what  he  has  done?  There'll  be  no 
end  to  it.  Why  he  has  sacrificed  himself  to  spare 
the  very  vanity  that  devours  him,  put  rancours 
in  the  vessels  of  his  peace,  and  his  eternal  jewel 
given  to  the  common  enemy  of  man,  to  make 
them  kings,  the  seed  of  Banquo  kings!  He  is 
magnificent!" 


52  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"Isn't  he  always  that?"  cried  Imogen  hotly. 
"  He's  like  a  pillar  of  sanity  and  law  in  this  house 
of  shams  and  swollen  vanities,  where  people  stalk 
about  with  a  sort  of  mad-house  dignity,  each  one 
fancying  himself  a  king  or  a  pope.  If  you  could 
have  heard  that  woman  talk  of  him!  Why  she 
thinks  him  stupid,  bigoted,  blinded  by  middle- 
class  prejudices.  She  talked  about  his  having  no 
aesthetic  sense,  and  insisted  that  her  artists  had 
always  shown  him  tolerance.  I  don't  know  why  it 
should  get  on  my  nerves  so,  I'm  sure,  but  her 
stupidity  and  assurance  are  enough  to  drive  one 
to  the  brink  of  collapse." 

"Yes,  as  opposed  to  his  singular  fineness, 
they  are  calculated  to  do  just  that,"  said  Miss 
Broadwood  gravely,  wisely  ignoring  Imogen's 
tears.  "But  what  has  been  is  nothing  to  what 
will  be.  Just  wait  until  Flavia's  black  swans 
have  flown  !  You  ought  not  to  try  to  stick 
it  out ;  that  would  only  make  it  harder  for  every 
one.  Suppose  you  let  me  telephone  your  mother 
to  wire  you  to  come  home  by  the  evening  train  ?  " 

"Anything,  rather  than  have  her  come  at  me 
like  that  again.  It  puts  me  in  a  perfectly  impossi- 
ble position,  and  he  is  so  fine!" 

"Of  course  it  does,"  said  Miss  Broadwood 


FLAVIA  AND  HER  ARTISTS  53 

sympathetically,  "  and  there  is  no  good  to  be  got 
from  facing  it.  I  will  stay,  because  such  things  in- 
terest me,  and  Frau  Lichtenfeld  will  stay  be- 
cause she  has  no  money  to  get  away,  and 
Buisson  will  stay  because  he  feels  somewhat  re- 
sponsible. These  complications  are  interesting 
enough  to  cold-blooded  folk  like  myself  who 
have  an  eye  for  the  dramatic  element,  but  they 
are  distracting  and  demoralizing  to  young  people 
with  any  serious  purpose  in  life." 

Miss  Broadwood's  counsel  was  all  the  more 
generous  seeing  that,  for  her,  the  most  interest- 
ing element  of  this  denotement  would  be  elimi- 
nated by  Imogen's  departure.  "If  she  goes  now, 
she'll  get  over  it,"  soliloquized  Miss  Broadwood, 
"if  she  stays  she'll  be  wrung  for  him,  and  the 
hurt  may  go  deep  enough  to  last.  I  haven't  the 
heart  to  see  her  spoiling  things  for  herself."  She 
telephoned  Mrs.  Willard,  and  helped  Imogen  to 
pack.  She  even  took  it  upon  herself  to  break  the 
news  of  Imogen's  going  to  Arthur,  who  remarked, 
as  he  rolled  a  cigarette  in  his  nerveless  fingers : 

"  Right  enough,  too.  What  should  she  do  here 
with  old  cynics  like  you  and  me,  Jimmy  ?  Seeing 
that  she  is  brim  full  of  dates  and  formulae  and 
other  positivisms,  and  is  so  girt  about  with  il- 


54  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

lusions  that  she  still  casts  a  shadow  in  the  sun. 
You've  been  very  tender  of  her,  haven't  you? 
I've  watched  you.  And  to  think  it  may  all  be 
gone  when  we  see  her  next.  'The  common  fate 
of  all  things  rare,'  you  know.  What  a  good  fel- 
low you  are,  anyway,  Jimmy,"  he  added,  put- 
ting his  hands  affectionately  on  her  shoulders. 

Arthur  went  with  them  to  the  station.  Flavia 
was  so  prostrated  by  the  concerted  action  of  her 
guests  that  she  was  able  to  see  Imogen  only  for  a 
moment  in  her  darkened  sleeping  chamber, 
where  she  kissed  her  hysterically,  without  lifting 
her  head,  bandaged  in  aromatic  vinegar.  On  the 
way  to  the  station  both  Arthur  and  Imogen 
threw  the  burden  of  keeping  up  appearances  en- 
tirely upon  Miss  Broadwood,  who  blithely  rose 
to  the  occasion.  When  Hamilton  carried  Imogen's 
bag  into  the  car,  Miss  Broadwood  detained  her 
for  a  moment,  whispering  as  she  gave  her  a  large, 
warm  handclasp,  "I'll  come  to  see  you  when  I  get 
back  to  town;  and,  in  the  meantime,  if  you  meet 
any  of  our  artists,  tell  them  you  have  left  Caius 
Marius  among  the  ruins  of  Carthage." 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL 

A  group  of  the  townspeople  stood  on  the  station 
siding  of  a  little  Kansas  town,  awaiting  the  com- 
ing of  the  night  train,  which  was  already  twenty 
minutes  overdue.  The  snow  had  fallen  thick  over 
everything;  in  the  pale  starlight  the  line  of 
bluffs  across  the  wide,  white  meadows  south  of 
the  town  made  soft,  smoke-coloured  curves 
against  the  clear  sky.  The  men  on  the  siding 
stood  first  on  one  foot  and  then  on  the  other,  their 
hands  thrust  deep  into  their  trousers  pockets, 
their  overcoats  open,  their  shoulders  screwed  up 
with  the  cold;  and  they  glanced  from  time  to 
time  toward  the  southeast,  where  the  railroad 
track  wound  along  the  river  shore.  They  con- 
versed in  low  tones  and  moved  about  restlessly, 
seeming  uncertain  as  to  what  was  expected  of 
them.  There  was  but  one  of  the  company  who 
looked  as  though  he  knew  exactly  why  he  was 
there ;  and  he  kept  conspicuously  apart ;  walking  to 


58  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

the  far  end  of  the  platform,  returning  to  the  sta- 
tion door,  then  pacing  up  the  track  again,  his 
chin  sunk  in  the  high  collar  of  his  overcoat,  his 
burly  shoulders  drooping  forward,  his  gait  heavy 
and  dogged.  Presently  he  was  approached  by  a 
tall,  spare,  grizzled  man  clad  in  a  faded  Grand 
Army  suit,  who  shuffled  out  from  the  group  and 
advanced  with  a  certain  deference,  craning  his 
neck  forward  until  his  back  made  the  angle  of  a 
jack-knife  three-quarters  open. 

M I  reckon  she's  a-goin'  to  be  pretty  late  agin  to- 
night, Jim,"  he  remarked  in  a  squeaky  falsetto. 
"S'pose  it's  the  snow?" 

"I  don't  know, "  responded  the  other  man  with 
a  shade  of  annoyance,  speaking  from  out  an  as- 
tonishing cataract  of  red  beard  that  grew  fiercely 
and  thickly  in  all  directions. 

The  spare  man  shifted  the  quill  toothpick  he 
was  chewing  to  the  other  side  of  his  mouth.  "It 
ain't  likely  that  anybody  from  the  East  will  come 
with  the  corpse,  I  s'pose, "  he  went  on  reflect- 
ively. 

"I  don't  know,"  responded  the  other,  more 
curtly  than  before. 

"It's  too  bad  he  didn't  belong  to  some  lodge  or 
other.  I  like  an  order  funeral  myself.  They  seem 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  59 

more  appropriate  for  people  of  some  repytation, " 
the  spare  man  continued,  with  an  ingratiating 
concession  in  his  shrill  voice,  as  he  carefully 
placed  his  toothpick  in  his  vest  pocket.  He  al- 
ways carried  the  flag  at  the  G.  A.  R.  funerals  in 
the  town. 

The  heavy  man  turned  on  his  heel,  without  re- 
plying, and  walked  up  the  siding.  The  spare  man 
shuffled  back  to  the  uneasy  group.  "Jim's  ez  full 
ez  a  tick,  ez  ushel,"  he  commented  commiser- 
atingly. 

Just  then  a  distant  whistle  sounded,  and  there 
was  a  shuffling  of  feet  on  the  platform.  A 
number  of  lanky  boys  of  all  ages  appeared  as  sud- 
denly and  slimily  as  eels  wakened  by  the  crack  of 
thunder;  some  came  from  the  waiting-room, 
where  they  had  been  warming  themselves  by  the 
red  stove,  or  half  asleep  on  the  slat  benches; 
others  uncoiled  themselves  from  baggage  trucks 
or  slid  out  of  express  wagons.  Two  clambered 
down  from  the  driver's  seat  of  a  hearse  that  stood 
backed  up  against  the  siding.  They  straightened 
their  stooping  shoulders  and  lifted  their  heads, 
and  a  flash  of  momentary  animation  kindled  their 
dull  eyes  at  that  cold,  vibrant  scream,  the  world- 
wide call  for  men.  It  stirred  them  like  the  note  of 


60  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

a  trumpet;  just  as  it  had  often  stirred  the  man 
who  was  coming  home  to-night,  in  his  boyhood. 

The  night  express  shot,  red  as  a  rocket,  from 
out  the  eastward  marsh  lands  and  wound  along 
the  river  shore  under  the  long  lines  of  shivering 
poplars  that  sentinelled  the  meadows,  the  escap- 
ing steam  hanging  in  grey  masses  against  the 
pale  sky  and  blotting  out  the  Milky  Way.  In  a  mo- 
ment the  red  glare  from  the  headlight  streamed 
up  the  snow-covered  track  before  the  siding  and 
glittered  on  the  wet,  black  rails.  The  burly  man 
with  the  dishevelled  red  beard  walked  swiftly  up 
the  platform  toward  the  approaching  train,  un- 
covering his  head  as  he  went.  The  group  of  men 
behind  him  hesitated,  glanced  questioningly  at 
one  another,  and  awkwardly  followed  his  exam- 
ple. The  train  stopped,  and  the  crowd  shuffled  up 
to  the  express  car  just  as  the  door  was  thrown 
open,  the  spare  man  in  the  G.  A.  R.  suit  thrusting 
his  head  forward  with  curiosity.  The  express 
messenger  appeared  in  the  doorway,  accompan- 
ied by  a  young  man  in  a  long  ulster  and  travelling 
cap. 

"Are  Mr.  Merrick's  friends  here?"  inquired 
the  young  man. 

The  group  on  the  platform  swayed  and  shuffled 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  61 

uneasily.  Philip  Phelps,  the  banker,  responded 
with  dignity:  "We  have  come  to  take  charge  of 
the  body.  Mr.  Merrick's  father  is  very  feeble  and 
can't  be  about." 

"Send  the  agent  out  here,"  growled  the  ex- 
press messenger,  "and  tell  the  operator  to  lend  a 
hand." 

The  coffin  was  got  out  of  its  rough  box  and 
down  on  the  snowy  platform.  The  townspeople 
drew  back  enough  to  make  room  for  it  and  then 
formed  a  close  semicircle  about  it,  looking  curi- 
ously at  the  palm  leaf  which  lay  across  the  black 
cover.  No  one  said  anything.  The  baggage  man 
stood  by  his  truck,  waiting  to  get  at  the  trunks. 
The  engine  panted  heavily,  and  the  fireman 
dodged  in  and  out  among  the  wheels  with  his  yel- 
low torch  and  long  oil-can,  snapping  the  spindle 
boxes.  The  young  Bostonian,  one  of  the  dead 
sculptor's  pupils  who  had  come  with  the  body, 
looked  about  him  helplessly.  He  turned  to  the 
banker,  the  only  one  of  that  black,  uneasy,  stoop- 
shouldered  group  who  seemed  enough  of  an  in- 
dividual to  be  addressed. 

"None  of  Mr.  Merrick's  brothers  are  here?" 
he  asked  uncertainly. 

The  man  with  the  red  beard  for  the  first  time 


62  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

stepped  up  and  joined  the  group.  "No,  they 
have  not  come  yet;  the  family  is  scattered.  The 
body  will  be  taken  directly  to  the  house."  He 
stooped  and  took  hold  of  one  of  the  handles  of 
the  coffin. 

"Take  the  long  hill  road  up,  Thompson,  it  will 
be  easier  on  the  horses,"  called  the  liveryman  as 
the  undertaker  snapped  the  door  of  the  hearse 
and  prepared  to  mount  to  the  driver's  seat. 

Laird,  the  red-bearded  lawyer,  turned  again 
to  the  stranger:  "We  didn't  know  whether  there 
would  be  any  one  with  him  or  not, "  he  explained. 
"  It's  a  long  walk,  so  you'd  better  go  up  in  the 
hack."  He  pointed  to  a  single  battered  convey- 
ance, but  the  young  man  replied  stiffly:  "Thank 
you,  but  I  think  I  will  go  up  with  the  hearse.  If 
you  don't  object,"  turning  to  the  undertaker, 
"I'll  ride  with  you." 

They  clambered  up  over  the  wheels  and  drove 
off  in  the  starlight  up  the  long,  white  hill  toward 
the  town.  The  lamps  in  the  still  village  were  shin- 
ing from  under  the  low,  snow-burdened  roofs; 
and  beyond,  on  every  side,  the  plains  reached  out 
into  emptiness,  peaceful  and  wide  as  the  soft  sky 
itself,  and  wrapped  in  a  tangible,  white  silence. 

When  the  hearse  backed  up  to  a  wooden  side- 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  63 

walk  before  a  naked,  weather-beaten  frame  house, 
the  same  composite,  ill-defined  group  that  had 
stood  upon  the  station  siding  was  huddled  about 
the  gate.  The  front  yard  was  an  icy  swamp,  and  a 
couple  of  warped  planks,  extending  from  the 
sidewalk  to  the  door,  made  a  sort  of  rickety  foot- 
bridge. The  gate  hung  on  one  hinge,  and  was 
opened  wide  with  difficulty.  Steavens,  the  young 
stranger,  noticed  that  something  black  was  tied 
to  the  knob  of  the  front  door. 

The  grating  sound  made  by  the  casket,  as  it 
was  drawn  from  the  hearse,  was  answered  by  a 
scream  from  the  house;  the  front  door  was 
wrenched  open,  and  a  tall,  corpulent  woman 
rushed  out  bareheaded  into  the  snow  and  flung 
herself  upon  the  coffin,  shrieking:  "My  boy,  my 
boy!  And  this  is  how  you've  come  home  to  me!" 

As  Steavens  turned  away  and  closed  his  eyes 
with  a  shudder  of  unutterable  repulsion,  another 
woman,  also  tall,  but  flat  and  angular,  dressed 
entirely  in  black,  darted  out  of  the  house  and 
caught  Mrs.  Merrick  by  the  shoulders,  crying 
sharply:  "Come,  come,  mother;  you  musn't  go 
on  like  this!"  Her  tone  changed  to  one  of  ob- 
sequious solemnity  as  she  turned  to  the  banker: 
"The  parlour  is  ready,  Mr.  Phelps." 


64  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

The  bearers  carried  the  coffin  along  the  nar- 
row boards,  while  the  undertaker  ran  ahead  with 
the  coffin-rests.  They  bore  it  into  a  large,  un- 
heated  room  that  smelled  of  dampness  and  dis- 
use and  furniture  polish,  and  set  it  down  under  a 
hanging  lamp  ornamented  with  jingling  glass 
prisms  and  before  a  "Rogers  group"  of  John 
Alden  and  Priscilla,  wreathed  with  smilax.  Henry 
Steavens  stared  about  him  with  the  sickening 
conviction  that  there  had  been  some  horrible  mis- 
take, and  that  he  had  somehow  arrived  at  the 
wrong  destination.  He  looked  painfully  about 
over  the  clover-green  Brussels,  the  fat  plush  up- 
holstery; among  the  hand-painted  china  placques 
and  panels,  and  vases,  for  some  mark  of  identifi- 
cation, for  something  that  might  once  conceiv- 
ably have  belonged  to  Harvey  Merrick.  It  was  not 
until  he  recognized  his  friend  in  the  crayon  por- 
trait of  a  little  boy  in  kilts  and  curls  hanging  above 
the  piano,  that  he  felt  willing  to  let  any  of  these 
people  approach  the  coffin. 

"Take  the  lid  off,  Mr.  Thompson;  let  me  see 
my  boy's  face,"  wailed  the  elder  woman  between 
her  sobs.  This  time  Steavens  looked  fearfully,  al- 
most beseechingly  into  her  face,  red  and  swollen 
under  its  masses  of  strong,  black,  shiny  hair.  He 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  65 

flushed,  dropped  his  eyes,  and  then,  almost  in- 
credulously, looked  again.  There  was  a  kind  of 
power  about  her  face  —  a  kind  of  brutal  hand- 
someness, even,  but  it  was  scarred  and  furrowed 
by  violence,  and  so  coloured  and  coarsened  by 
fiercer  passions  that  grief  seemed  never  to  have 
laid  a  gentle  finger  there.  The  long  nose  was 
distended  and  knobbed  at  the  end,  and  there 
were  deep  lines  on  either  side  of  it;  her  heavy, 
black  brows  almost  met  across  her  forehead,  her 
teeth  were  large  and  square,  and  set  far  apart  — 
teeth  that  could  tear.  She  filled  the  room;  the 
men  were  obliterated,  seemed  tossed  about  like 
twigs  in  an  angry  water,  and  even  Steavens  felt 
himself  being  drawn  into  the  whirlpool. 

The  daughter  —  the  tall,  raw-boned  woman  in 
cr&pe,  with  a  mourning  comb  in  her  hair  which 
curiously  lengthened  her  long  face  —  sat  stiffly 
upon  the  sofa,  her  hands,  conspicuous  for  their 
large  knuckles,  folded  in  her  lap,  her  mouth  and 
eyes  drawn  down,  solemnly  awaiting  the  opening 
of  the  coffin.  Near  the  door  stood  a  mulatto  wo- 
man, evidently  a  servant  in  the  house,  with  a 
timid  bearing  and  an  emaciated  face  pitifully 
sad  and  gentle.  She  was  weeping  silently,  the  cor- 
ner of  her  calico  apron  lifted  to  her  eyes,  occa- 


66  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

sionally  suppressing  a  long,  quivering  sob. 
Steavens  walked  over  and  stood  beside  her. 

Feeble  steps  were  heard  on  the  stairs,  and  an 
old  man,  tall  and  frail,  odorous  of  pipe  smoke, 
with  shaggy,  unkept  grey  hair  and  a  dingy  beard, 
tobacco  stained  about  the  mouth,  entered  uncer- 
tainly. He  went  slowly  up  to  the  coffin  and  stood 
rolling  a  blue  cotton  handkerchief  between  his 
hands,  seeming  so  pained  and  embarrassed  by 
his  wife's  orgy  of  grief  that  he  had  no  conscious- 
ness of  anything  else. 

"There,  there,  Annie,  dear,  don't  take  on  so," 
he  quavered  timidly,  putting  out  a  shaking  hand 
and  awkwardly  patting  her  elbow.  She  turned 
with  a  cry,  and  sank  upon  his  shoulder  with  such 
violence  that  he  tottered  a  little.  He  did  not  even 
glance  toward  the  coffin,  but  continued  to  look  at 
her  with  a  dull,  frightened,  appealing  expression, 
as  a  spaniel  looks  at  the  whip.  His  sunken  cheeks 
slowly  reddened  and  burned  with  miserable 
shame.  When  his  wife  rushed  from  the  room,  her 
daughter  strode  after  her  with  set  lips.  The  ser- 
vant stole  up  to  the  coffin,  bent  over  it  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  slipped  away  to  the  kitchen,  leav- 
ing Steavens,  the  lawyer  and  the  father  to  them- 
selves. The  old  man  stood  trembling  and  looking 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  67 

down  at  his  dead  son's  face.  The  sculptor's  splen- 
did head  seemed  even  more  noble  in  its  rigid 
stillness  than  in  life.  The  dark  hair  had  crept 
down  upon  the  wide  forehead;  the  face  seemed 
strangely  long,  but  in  it  there  was  not  that  beau- 
tiful and  chaste  repose  which  we  expect  to  find 
in  the  faces  of  the  dead.  The  brows  were  so  drawn 
that  there  were  two  deep  lines  above  the  beaked 
nose,  and  the  chin  was  thrust  forward  defiantly. 
It  was  as  though  the  strain  of  life  had  been  so 
sharp  and  bitter  that  death  could  not  at  once 
wholly  relax  the  tension  and  smooth  the  counte- 
nance into  perfect  peace  —  as  though  he  were 
still  guarding  something  precious  and  holy,  which 
might  even  yet  be  wrested  from  him. 

The  old  man's  lips  were  working  under  his 
stained  beard.  He  turned  to  the  lawyer  with  timid 
deference:  "Phelps  and  the  rest  are  comin'  back 
to  set  up  with  Harve,  ain't  they?"  he  asked. 
"Thank  'ee,  Jim,  thank  'ee."  He  brushed  the 
hair  back  gently  from  his  son's  forehead.  "He 
was  a  good  boy,  Jim ;  always  a  good  boy.  He  was 
ez  gentle  ez  a  child  and  the  kindest  of  'em  all  — 
only  we  didn't  none  of  us  ever  onderstand  him. " 
The  tears  trickled  slowly  down  his  beard  and 
dropped  upon  the  sculptor's  coat. 


68  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"  Martin,  Martin.  Oh,  Martin !  come  here, "  his 
wife  wailed  from  the  top  of  the  stairs.  The  old 
man  started  timorously:  "Yes,  Annie,  I'm  com- 
ing. "  He  turned  away,  hesitated,  stood  for  a  mo- 
ment in  miserable  indecision ;  then  reached  back 
and  patted  the  dead  man's  hair  softly,  and  stum- 
bled from  the  room. 

"  Poor  old  man,  I  didn't  think  he  had  any  tears 
left.  Seems  as  if  his  eyes  would  have  gone  dry 
long  ago.  At  his  age  nothing  cuts  very  deep," 
remarked  the  lawyer. 

Something  in  his  tone  made  Steavens  glance 
up.  While  the  mother  had  been  in  the  room,  the 
young  man  had  scarcely  seen  any  one  else;  but 
now,  from  the  moment  he  first  glanced  into  Jim 
Laird's  florid  face  and  blood-shot  eyes,  he  knew 
that  he  had  found  what  he  had  been  heartsick  at 
not  finding  before  —  the  feeling,  the  understand- 
ing, that  must  exist  in  some  one,  even  here. 

The  man  was  red  as  his  beard,  with  features 
swollen  and  blurred  by  dissipation,  and  a  hot, 
blazing  blue  eye.  His  face  was  strained  —  that  of 
a  man  who  is  controlling  himself  with  difficulty 
—  and  he  kept  plucking  at  his  beard  with  a  sort 
of  fierce  resentment.  Steavens,  sitting  by  the 
window,   watched  him  turn   down  the  glaring 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  69 

lamp,  still  its  jangling  pendants  with  an  angry 
gesture,  and  then  stand  with  his  hands  locked 
behind  him,  staring  down  into  the  master's  face. 
He  could  not  help  wondering  what  link  there 
could  have  been  between  the  porcelain  vessel 
and  so  sooty  a  lump  of  potter's  clay. 

From  the  kitchen  an  uproar  was  sounding; 
when  the  dining-room  door  opened,  the  import  of 
it  was  clear.  The  mother  was  abusing  the  maid 
for  having  forgotten  to  make  the  dressing  for  the 
chicken  salad  which  had  been  prepared  for  the 
watchers.  Steavens  had  never  heard  anything  in 
the  least  like  it;  it  was  injured,  emotional,  dra- 
matic abuse,  unique  and  masterly  in  its  excru- 
ciating cruelty,  as  violent  and  unrestrained  as 
had  been  her  grief  of  twenty  minutes  before.  With 
a  shudder  of  disgust  the  lawyer  went  into  the 
dining-room  and  closed  the  door  into  the  kitchen. 

"Poor  Roxy's  getting  it  now,"  he  remarked 
when  he  came  back.  "The  Merricks  took  her  out 
of  the  poor-house  years  ago;  and  if  her  loyalty 
would  let  her,  I  guess  the  poor  old  thing  could  tell 
tales  that  would  curdle  your  blood.  She's  the  mu- 
latto woman  who  was  standing  in  here  a  while 
ago,  with  her  apron  to  her  eyes.  The  old  woman 
is  a  fury;  there  never  was  anybody  like  her  for 


70  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

demonstrative  piety  and  ingenious  cruelty.  She 
made  Harvey's  life  a  hell  for  him  when  he  lived 
at  home;  he  was  so  sick  ashamed  of  it.  I  never 
could  see  how  he  kept  himself  so  sweet. " 

"He  was  wonderful,"  said  Steavens  slowly, 
"wonderful;  but  until  to-night  I  have  never 
known  how  wonderful." 

"That  is  the  true  and  eternal  wonder  of  it, 
anyway;  that  it  can  come  even  from  such  a  dung 
heap  as  this,"  the  lawyer  cried,  with  a  sweeping 
gesture  which  seemed  to  indicate  much  more 
than  the  four  walls  within  which  they  stood. 

"I  think  I'll  see  whether  I  can  get  a  little  air. 
The  room  is  so  close  I  am  beginning  to  feel 
rather  faint,"  murmured  Steavens,  struggling 
with  one  of  the  windows.  The  sash  was  stuck, 
however,  and  would  not  yield,  so  he  sat  down  de- 
jectedly and  began  pulling  at  his  collar.  The 
lawyer  came  over,  loosened  the  sash  with  one 
blow  of  his  red  fist  and  sent  the  window  up  a  few 
inches.  Steavens  thanked  him,  but  the  nausea 
which  had  been  gradually  climbing  into  his 
throat  for  the  last  half  hour  left  him  with  but  one 
desire  —  a  desperate  feeling  that  he  must  get 
away  from  this  place  with  what  was  left  of  Har- 
vey Merrick.  Oh,  he  comprehended  well  enough 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  71 

now  the  quiet  bitterness  of  the  smile  that  he  had 
seen  so  often  on  his  master's  lips! 

He  remembered  that  once,  when  Merrick 
returned  from  a  visit  home,  he  brought  with  him 
a  singularly  feeling  and  suggestive  bas-relief  of  a 
thin,  faded  old  woman,  sitting  and  sewing  some- 
thing pinned  to  her  knee;  while  a  full-lipped, 
full-blooded  little  urchin,  his  trousers  held  up 
by  a  single  gallows,  stood  beside  her,  impatiently 
twitching  her  gown  to  call  her  attention  to  a 
butterfly  he  had  caught.  Steavens,  impressed  by 
the  tender  and  delicate  modelling  of  the  thin, 
tired  face,  had  asked  him  if  it  were  his  mother. 
He  remembered  the  dull  flush  that  had  burned 
up  in  the  sculptor's  face. 

The  lawyer  was  sitting  in  a  rocking-chair  be- 
side the  coffin,  his  head  thrown  back  and  his  eyes 
closed.  Steavens  looked  at  him  earnestly,  puzzled 
at  the  line  of  the  chin,  and  wondering  why  a  man 
should  conceal  a  feature  of  such  distinction  under 
that  disfiguring  shock  of  beard.  Suddenly,  as 
though  he  felt  the  young  sculptor's  keen  glance, 
he  opened  his  eyes. 

"Was  he  always  a  good  deal  of  an  oyster  ?"  he 
asked  abruptly.  "He  was  terribly  shy  as  a  boy." 

"Yes,  he  was  an  oyster,  since  you  put  it  so," 


72  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

rejoined  Steavens.  "Although  he  could  be  very 
fond  of  people,  he  always  gave  one  the  impres- 
sion of  being  detached.  He  disliked  violent  emo- 
tion; he  was  reflective,  and  rather  distrustful  of 
himself  —  except,  of  course,  as  regarded  his 
work.  He  was  sure-footed  enough  there.  He  dis- 
trusted men  pretty  thoroughly  and  women  even 
more,  yet  somehow  without  believing  ill  of  them. 
He  was  determined,  indeed,  to  believe  the  best, 
but  he  seemed  afraid  to  investigate. " 

"  A  burnt  dog  dreads  the  fire, "  said  the  lawyer 
grimly,  and  closed  his  eyes. 

Steavens  went  on  and  on,  reconstructing  that 
whole  miserable  boyhood.  All  this  raw,  biting 
ugliness  had  been  the  portion  of  the  man  whose 
tastes  were  refined  beyond  the  limits  of  the  rea- 
sonable —  whose  mind  was  an  exhaustless  gal- 
lery of  beautiful  impressions,  and  so  sensitive  that 
the  mere  shadow  of  a  poplar  leaf  flickering  against 
a  sunny  wall  would  be  etched  and  held  there  for- 
ever. Surely,  if  ever  a  man  had  the  magic  word  in 
his  finger  tips,  it  was  Merrick.  Whatever  he 
touched,  he  revealed  its  holiest  secret;  liberated 
it  from  enchantment  and  restored  it  to  its  pris- 
tine loveliness,  like  the  Arabian  prince  who 
fought  the  enchantress    spell    for   spell.    Upon 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  73 

whatever  he  had  come  in  contact  with,  he  had 
left  a  beautiful  record  of  the  experience  —  a  sort 
of  ethereal  signature;  a  scent,  a  sound,  a  colour 
that  was  his  own. 

Steavens  understood  now  the  real  tragedy  of  his 
master's  life ;  neither  love  nor  wine,  as  many  had 
conjectured ;  but  a  blow  which  had  fallen  earlier 
and  cut  deeper  than  these  could  have  done  —  a 
shame  not  his,  and  yet  so  unescapably  his,  to  hide 
in  his  heart  from  his  very  boyhood.  And  with- 
out —  the  frontier  warfare ;  the  yearning  of  a  boy, 
cast  ashore  upon  a  desert  of  newness  and  ugliness 
and  sordidness,  for  all  that  is  chastened  and  old, 
and  noble  with  traditions. 

At  eleven  o'clock  the  tall,  flat  woman  in  black 
crepe  entered  and  announced  that  the  watchers 
were  arriving,  and  asked  them  "to  step  into  the 
dining-room."  As  Steavens  rose,  the  lawyer  said 
dryly:  "You  go  on  —  it'll  be  a  good  experience 
for  you,  doubtless ;  as  for  me,  I'm  not  equal  to  that 
crowd  to-night;  I've  had  twenty  years  of  them." 

As  Steavens  closed  the  door  after  him  he 
glanced  back  at  the  lawyer,  sitting  by  the  coffin 
in  the  dim  light,  with  his  chin  resting  on  his  hand. 

The  same  misty  group  that  had  stood  before 
the  door  of  the  express  car  shuffled  into  the  dining- 


74  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

room.  In  the  light  of  the  kerosene  lamp  they 
separated  and  became  individuals.  The  minister, 
a  pale,  feeble-looking  man  with  white  hair  and 
blond  chin-whiskers,  took  his  seat  beside  a  small 
side  table  and  placed  his  Bible  upon  it.  The 
Grand  Army  man  sat  down  behind  the  stove  and 
tilted  his  chair  back  comfortably  against  the  wall, 
fishing  his  quill  toothpick  from  his  waistcoat 
pocket.  The  two  bankers,  Phelps  and  Elder,  sat 
off  in  a  corner  behind  the  dinner-table,  where  they 
could  finish  their  discussion  of  the  new  usury 
law  and  its  effect  on  chattel  security  loans.  The 
real  estate  agent,  an  old  man  with  a  smiling, 
hypocritical  face,  soon  joined  them.  The  coal 
and  lumber  dealer  and  the  cattle  shipper  sat  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  hard  coal-burner,  their  feet 
on  the  nickel- work.  Steavens  took  a  book  from 
his  pocket  and  began  to  read.  The  talk  around 
him  ranged  through  various  topics  of  local  in- 
terest while  the  house  was  quieting  down.  When 
it  was  clear  that  the  members  of  the  family  were 
in  bed,  the  Grand  Army  man  hitched  his  shoul- 
ders and,  untangling  his  long  legs,  caught  his 
heels  on  the  rounds  of  his  chair. 

"S'pose  there'll  be  a  will,  Phelps  ?"  he  queried 
in  his  weak  falsetto. 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  75 

The  banker  laughed  disagreeably,  and  began 
trimming  his  nails  with  a  peail-handled  pocket- 
knife. 

"  There'll  scarcely  be  any  need  for  one,  will 
there  ?"  he  queried  in  his  turn. 

The  restless  Grand  Army  man  shifted  his 
position  again,  getting  his  knees  still  nearer  his 
chin.  "Why,  the  ole  man  says  Harve's  done 
right  well  lately,"  he  chirped. 

The  other  banker  spoke  up.  "I  reckon  he 
means  by  that  Harve  ain't  asked  him  to  mortgage 
any  more  farms  lately,  so  as  he  could  go  on  with 
his  education." 

"Seems  like  my  mind  don't  reach  back  to  a 
time  when  Harve  wasn't  bein'  edycated,"  tittered 
the  Grand  Army  man. 

There  was  a  general  chuckle.  The  minister 
took  out  his  handkerchief  and  blew  his  nose 
sonorously.  Banker  Phelps  closed  his  knife  with 
a  snap.  "It's  too  bad  the  old  man's  sons  didn't 
turn  out  better,"  he  remarked  with  reflective 
authority.  "  They  never  hung  together.  He  spent 
money  enough  on  Harve  to  stock  a  dozen  cattle- 
farms  and  he  might  as  well  have  poured  it  into 
Sand  Creek.  If  Harve  had  stayed  at  home  and 
helped  nurse  what  little  they  had,  and  gone  into 


76  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

stock  on  the  old  man's  bottom  farm,  they  might 
all  have  been  well  fixed.  But  the  old  man  had  to 
trust  everything  to  tenants  and  was  cheated 
right  and  left." 

"  Harve  never  could  have  handled  stock  none," 
interposed  the  cattleman.  "  He  hadn't  it  in  him  to 
be  sharp.  Do  you  remember  when  he  bought 
Sander's  mules  for  eight-year  olds,  when  every- 
body in  town  knew  that  Sander's  father-in-law 
give  'em  to  his  wife  for  a  wedding  present  eigh- 
teen years  before,  an'  they  was  full-grown  mules 
then." 

Every  one  chuckled,  and  the  Grand  Army 
man  rubbed  his  knees  with  a  spasm  of  childish 
delight. 

"Harve  never  was  much  account  for  any- 
thing practical,  and  he  shore  was  never  fond  of 
work,"  began  the  coal  and  lumber  dealer.  "I 
mind  the  last  time  he  was  home ;  the  day  he  left, 
when  the  old  man  was  out  to  the  barn  helpin'  his 
hand  hitch  up  to  take  Harve  to  the  train,  and 
Cal  Moots  was  patchin'  up  the  fence,  Harve,  he 
come  out  on  the  step  and  sings  out,  in  his  lady- 
like voice:  "  Cal  Moots,  Cal  Moots!  please  come 
cord  my  trunk." 

"That's  Harve  for  you,"  approved  the  Grand 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  77 

Army  man  gleefully.  "I  kin  hear  him  howlin' 
yet  when  he  was  a  big  feller  in  long  pants 
and  his  mother  used  to  whale  him  with  a  raw- 
hide in  the  barn  for  lettin'  the  cows  git  foun- 
dered in  the  cornfield  when  he  was  drivin'  'em 
home  from  pasture.  He  killed  a  cow  of  mine 
that-a-way  onct  —  a  pure  Jersey  and  the  best 
milker  I  had,  an*  the  ole  man  had  to  put  up  for 
her.  Harve,  he  was  watchin'  the  sun  set  acrost  the 
marshes  when  the  anamile  got  away;  he  argued 
that  sunset  was  oncommon  fine." 

"  Where  the  old  man  made  his  mistake  was  in 
sending  the  boy  East  to  school,"  said  Phelps, 
stroking  his  goatee  and  speaking  in  a  deliber- 
ate, judicial  tone.  "  There  was  where  he  got 
his  head  full  of  trapseing  to  Paris  and  all  such 
folly.  What  Harve  needed,  of  all  people,  was 
a  course  in  some  first-class  Kansas  City  busi- 
ness college." 

The  letters  were  swimming  before  Steavens's 
eyes.  Was  it  possible  that  these  men  did  not  un- 
derstand, that  the  palm  on  the  coffin  meant  noth- 
ing to  them?  The  very  name  of  their  town 
would  have  remained  forever  buried  in  the  pos- 
tal guide  had  it  not  been  now  and  again  men- 
tioned in  the  world  in  connection  with  Harvey 


78  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Merrick's.  He  remembered  what  his  master  had 
said  to  him  on  the  day  of  his  death,  after  the  con- 
gestion of  both  lungs  had  shut  off  any  probability 
of  recovery,  and  the  sculptor  had  asked  his  pupil 
to  send  his  body  home.  "It's  not  a  pleasant  place 
to  be  lying  while  the  world  is  moving  and  doing 
and  bettering,"  he  had  said  with  a  feeble  smile, 
"but  it  rather  seems  as  though  we  ought  to  go 
back  to  the  place  we  came  from  in  the  end.  The 
townspeople  will  come  in  for  a  look  at  me;  and 
after  they  have  had  their  say  I  shan't  have  much 
to  fear  from  the  judgment  of  God.  The  wings 
of  the  Victory,  in  there" — with  a  weak  gesture 
toward  his  studio  —  "will  not  shelter  me." 

The  cattleman  took  up  the  comment.  "Forty's 
young  for  a  Merrick  to  cash  in;  they  usually 
hang  on  pretty  well.  Probably  he  helped  it  along 
with  whisky." 

"His  mother's  people  were  not  long  lived,  and 
Harvey  never  had  a  robust  constitution,"  said 
the  minister  mildly.  He  would  have  liked  to  say 
more.  He  had  been  the  boy's  Sunday-school 
teacher,  and  had  been  fond  of  him;  but  he  felt 
that  he  was  not  in  a  position  to  speak.  His  own 
sons  had  turned  out  badly,  and  it  was  not  a  year 
since  one  of  them  had  made  his  last  trip  home  in 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  79 

the  express  car,  shot  in  a  gambling-house  in  the 
Black  Hills. 

"Nevertheless,  there  is  no  disputin'  that  Harve 
frequently  looked  upon  the  wine  when  it  was  red, 
also  variegated,  and  it  shore  made  an  oncommon 
fool  of  him,"  moralized  the  cattleman. 

Just  then  the  door  leading  into  the  parlour  rat- 
tled loudly  and  every  one  started  involuntarily, 
looking  relieved  when  only  Jim  Laird  came  out. 
His  red  face  was  convulsed  with  anger,  and  the 
Grand  Army  man  ducked  his  head  when  he  saw 
the  spark  in  his  blue,  blood-shot  eye.  They  were 
all  afraid  of  Jim;  he  was  a  drunkard,  but  he 
could  twist  the  law  to  suit  his  client's  needs  as  no 
other  man  in  all  western  Kansas  could  do;  and 
there  were  many  who  tried.  The  lawyer  closed 
the  door  gently  behind  him,  leaned  back  against 
it  and  folded  his  arms,  cocking  his  head  a  little 
to  one  side.  When  he  assumed  this  attitude  in 
the  court-room,  ears  were  always  pricked  up,  as 
it  usually  foretold  a  flood  of  withering  sarcasm. 

"I've  been  with  you  gentlemen  before,"  he  be- 
gan in  a  dry,  even  tone,  "when  you've  sat  by  the 
coffins  of  boys  born  and  raised  in  this  town; 
and,  if  I  remember  rightly,  you  were  never  any 
too  well  satisfied  when  you  checked  them  up. 


80  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

What's  the  matter,  anyhow?  Why  is  it  that  re- 
putable young  men  are  as  scarce  as  millionaires 
in  Sand  City  ?  It  might  almost  seem  to  a  stranger 
that  there  was  some  way  something  the  matter 
with  your  progressive  town.  Why  did  Ruben 
Sayer,  the  brightest  young  lawyer  you  ever 
turned  out,  after  he  had  come  home  from  the 
university  as  straight  as  a  die,  take  to  drinking 
and  forge  a  check  and  shoot  himself?  Why  did 
Bill  Merrit's  son  die  of  the  shakes  in  a  saloon  in 
Omaha  ?  Why  was  Mr.  Thomas's  son,  here,  shot 
in  a  gambling-house  ?  Why  did  young  Adams 
burn  his  mill  to  beat  the  insurance  companies 
and  go  to  the  pen  ?" 

The  lawyer  paused  and  unfolded  his  arms, 
laying  one  clenched  fist  quietly  on  the  table. 
"I'll  tell  you  why.  Because  you  drummed  noth- 
ing but  money  and  knavery  into  their  ears  from 
the  time  they  wore  knickerbockers ;  because  you 
carped  away  at  them  as  you've  been  carping 
here  to-night,  holding  our  friends  Phelps  and 
Elder  up  to  them  for  their  models,  as  our  grand- 
fathers held  up  George  Washington  and  John 
Adams.  But  the  boys,  worse  luck,  were  young, 
and  raw  at  the  business  you  put  them  to;  and 
how  could  they  match  coppers  with  such  artists 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  81 

as  Phelps  and  Elder?  You  wanted  them  to  be 
successful  rascals;  they  were  only  unsuccessful 
ones  —  that's  all  the  difference.  There  was  only 
one  boy  ever  raised  in  this  borderland  between 
ruffianism  and  civilization,  who  didn't  come  to 
grief,  and  you  hated  Harvey  Merrick  more  for 
winning  out  than  you  hated  all  the  other  boys 
who  got  under  the  wheels.  Lord,  Lord,  how  you 
did  hate  him !  Phelps,  here,  is  fond  of  saying  that 
he  could  buy  and  sell  us  all  out  any  time  he's  a 
mind  to ;  but  he  knew  Harve  wouldn't  have  given 
a  tinker's  damn  for  his  bank  and  all  his  cattle- 
farms  put  together;  and  a  lack  of  appreciation, 
that  way,  goes  hard  with  Phelps. 

"Old  Nimrod,  here,  thinks  Harve  drank  too 
much  ;  and  this  from  such  as  Nimrod  and  me ! 

"Brother  Elder  says  Harve  was  too  free  with 
the  old  man's  money  —  fell  short  in  filial  consid- 
eration, maybe.  Well,  we  can  all  remember  the 
very  tone  in  which  brother  Elder  swore  his  own 
father  was  a  liar,  in  the  county  court;  and  we  all 
know  that  the  old  man  came  out  of  that  partner- 
ship with  his  son  as  bare  as  a  sheared  lamb.  But 
maybe  I'm  getting  personal,  and  I'd  better  be 
driving  ahead  at  what  I  want  to  say." 

The  lawyer  paused  a  moment,   squared  his 


8fe  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

heavy  shoulders,  and  went  on:  "Harvey  Mer- 
rick and  I  went  to  school  together,  back  East. 
We  were  dead  in  earnest,  and  we  wanted  you  all 
to  be  proud  of  us  some  day.  We  meant  to  be 
great  men.  Even  I,  and  I  haven't  lost  my  sense 
of  humour,  gentlemen,  I  meant  to  be  a  great 
man.  I  came  back  here  to  practise,  and  I  found 
you  didn't  in  the  least  want  me  to  be  a  great 
man.  You  wanted  me  to  be  a  shrewd  lawyer  — 
oh,  yes !  Our  veteran  here  wanted  me  to  get  him 
an  increase  of  pension,  because  he  had  dyspepsia; 
Phelps  wanted  a  new  county  survey  that  would 
put  the  widow  Wilson's  little  bottom  farm  in- 
side his  south  line;  Elder  wanted  to  lend  money 
at  5  per  cent  a  month,  and  get  it  collected;  old 
Stark  here  wanted  to  wheedle  old  women  up  in 
Vermont  into  investing  their  annuities  in  real- 
estate  mortgages  that  are  not  worth  the  paper 
they  are  written  on.  Oh,  you  needed  me  hard 
enough,  and  you'll  go  on  needing  me;  and  that's 
why  I'm  not  afraid  to  plug  the  truth  home  to  you 
this  once. 

"Well,  I  came  back  here  and  became  the 
damned  shyster  you  wanted  me  to  be.  You  pre- 
tend to  have  some  sort  of  respect  for  me ;  and  yet 
you'll  stand  up  and  throw  mud  at  Harvey  Mer- 


THE  SCULPTOR'S  FUNERAL  83 

rick,  whose  soul  you  couldn't  dirty  and  whose 
hands  you  couldn't  tie.  Oh,  you're  a  discriminat- 
ing lot  of  Christians !  There  have  been  times  when 
the  sight  of  Harvey's  name  in  some  Eastern 
paper  has  made  me  hang  my  head  like  a  whipped 
dog;  and,  again,  times  when  I  liked  to  think  of 
him  off  there  in  the  world,  away  from  all  this 
hog-wallow,  doing  his  great  work  and  climbing 
the  big,  clean  up-grade  he'd  set  for  himself. 

"And  we?  Now  that  we've  fought  and  lied 
and  sweated  and  stolen,  and  hated  as  only  the 
disappointed  strugglers  in  a  bitter,  dead  little 
Western  town  know  how  to  do,  what  have  we  got 
to  show  for  it?  Harvey  Merrick  wouldn't  have 
given  one  sunset  over  your  marshes  for  all  you've 
got  put  together,  and  you  know  it.  It's  not  for  me 
to  say  why,  in  the  inscrutable  wisdom  of  God,  a 
genius  should  ever  have  been  called  from  his 
place  of  hatred  and  bitter  waters;  but  I  want 
this  Boston  man  to  know  that  the  drivel  he's 
been  hearing  here  to-night  is  the  only  tribute  any 
truly  great  man  could  ever  have  from  such  a  lot 
of  sick,  side-tracked,  burnt-dog,  land-poor  sharks 
as  the  here-present  financiers  of  Sand  City — upon 
which  town  may  God  have  mercy!" 

The  lawyer  thrust  out  his  hand  to  Steavens  as 


84  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

he  passed  him,  caught  up  his  overcoat  in  the  hall, 
and  had  left  the  house  before  the  Grand  Army 
man  had  had  time  to  lift  his  ducked  head  and 
crane  his  long  neck  about  at  his  fellows. 

Next  day  Jim  Laird  was  drunk  and  unable  to 
attend  the  funeral  services.  Steavens  called 
twice  at  his  office,  but  was  compelled  to  start 
East  without  seeing  him.  He  had  a  presentiment 
that  he  would  hear  from  him  again,  and  left  his 
address  on  the  lawyer's  table ;  but  if  Laird  found 
it,  he  never  acknowledged  it.  The  thing  in  him 
that  Harvey  Merrick  had  loved  must  have  gone 
under  ground  with  Harvey  Merrick's  coffin;  for 
it  never  spoke  again,  and  Jim  got  the  cold  he 
died  of  driving  across  the  Colorado  mountains 
to  defend  one  of  Phelps's  sons  who  had  got  into 
trouble  out  there  by  cutting  government  timber. 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE 

When  Caroline  Noble's  friends  learned  that 
Raymond  d'Esquerre  was  to  spend  a  month  at 
her  place  on  the  Sound  before  he  sailed  to  fill  his 
engagement  for  the  London  opera  season,  they 
considered  it  another  striking  instance  of  the  per- 
versity of  things.  That  the  month  was  May,  and 
the  most  mild  and  florescent  of  all  the  blue-and- 
white  Mays  the  middle  coast  had  known  in  years, 
but  added  to  their  sense  of  wrong.  D'Esquerre, 
they  learned,  was  ensconced  in  the  lodge  in  the 
apple  orchard,  just  beyond  Caroline's  glorious 
garden,  and  report  went  that  at  almost  any  hour 
the  sound  of  the  tenor's  voice  and  of  Caroline's 
crashing  accompaniment  could  be  heard  floating 
through  the  open  windows,  out  among  the  snowy 
apple  boughs.  The  Sound,  steel-blue  and  dotted 
with  white  sails,  was  splendidly  seen  from  the 
windows  of  the  lodge.  The  garden  to  the  left  and 
the  orchard  to  the  right  had  never  been  so  riotous 


88  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

with  spring,  and  had  burst  into  impassioned 
bloom,  as  if  to  accommodate  Caroline,  though 
she  was  certainly  the  last  woman  to  whom  the 
witchery  of  Freya  could  be  attributed;  the  last 
woman,  as  her  friends  affirmed,  to  at  all  adequate- 
ly appreciate  and  make  the  most  of  such  a  setting 
for  the  great  tenor. 

Of  course,  they  admitted,  Caroline  was  musi- 
cal —  well,  she  ought  to  be !  —  but  in  that  as  in 
everything  she  was  paramountly  cool-headed, 
slow  of  impulse,  and  disgustingly  practical;  in 
that,  as  in  everything  else,  she  had  herself  so  pro- 
vokingly  well  in  hand.  Of  course  it  would  be  she, 
always  mistress  of  herself  in  any  situation,  she 
who  would  never  be  lifted  one  inch  from  the 
ground  by  it,  and  who  would  go  on  superintend- 
ing her  gardeners  and  workmen  as  usual,  it  would 
be  she  who  got  him.  Perhaps  some  of  them  sus- 
pected that  this  was  exactly  why  she  did  get 
him,  and  it  but  nettled  them  the  more. 

Caroline's  coolness,  her  capableness,  her  gen- 
eral success,  especially  exasperated  people  be- 
cause they  felt  that,  for  the  most  part,  she  had 
made  herself  what  she  was;  that  she  had  cold- 
bloodedly set  about  complying  with  the  de- 
mands of  life  and  making  her  position  comforta- 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  89 

ble  and  masterful.  That  was  why,  every  one  said, 
she  had  married  Howard  Noble.  Women  who 
did  not  get  through  life  so  well  as  Caroline,  who 
could  not  make  such  good  terms  either  with  for- 
tune or  their  husbands,  who  did  not  find  their 
health  so  unfailingly  good,  or  hold  their  looks  so 
well,  or  manage  their  children  so  easily,  or  give 
such  distinction  to  all  they  did,  were  fond  of 
stamping  Caroline  as  a  materialist  and  called  her 
hard. 

The  impression  of  cold  calculation,  of  having 
a  definite  policy,  which  Caroline  gave,  was  far 
from  a  false  one;  but  there  was  this  to  be  said 
for  her,  that  there  were  extenuating  circum- 
stances which  her  friends  could  not  know. 

If  Caroline  held  determinedly  to  the  middle 
course,  if  she  was  apt  to  regard  with  distrust 
everything  which  inclined  toward  extravagance, 
it  was  not  because  she  was  unacquainted  with 
other  standards  than  her  own,  or  had  never 
seen  another  side  of  life.  She  had  grown  up  in 
Brooklyn,  in  a  shabby  little  house  under  the 
vacillating  administration  of  her  father,  a  music 
teacher  who  usually  neglected  his  duties  to  write 
orchestral  compositions  for  which  the  world 
seemed  to  have  no  especial  need.  His  spirit  was 


90  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

warped  by  bitter  vindictiveness  and  puerile  self- 
commiseration,  and  he  spent  his  days  in  scorn  of 
the  labour  that  brought  him  bread  and  in  pitiful 
devotion  to  the  labour  that  brought  him  only  dis- 
appointment, writing  interminable  scores  which 
demanded  of  the  orchestra  everything  under 
heaven  except  melody. 

It  was  not  a  cheerful  home  for  a  girl  to  grow 
up  in.  The  mother,  who  idolized  her  husband  as 
the  music  lord  of  the  future,  was  left  to  a  life- 
long battle  with  broom  and  dust-pan,  to  never 
ending  conciliatory  overtures  to  the  butcher  and 
grocer,  to  the  making  of  her  own  gowns  and  of 
Caroline's,  and  to  the  delicate  task  of  mollifying 
Auguste's  neglected  pupils. 

The  son,  Heinrich,  a  painter,  Caroline's  only 
brother,  had  inherited  all  his  father's  vindictive 
sensitiveness  without  his  capacity  for  slavish 
application.  His  little  studio  on  the  third  floor 
had  been  much  frequented  by  young  men  as  un- 
successful as  himself,  who  met  there  to  give 
themselves  over  to  contemptuous  derision  of 
this  or  that  artist  whose  industry  and  stupidity 
had  won  him  recognition.  Heinrich,  when  he 
worked  at  all,  did  newspaper  sketches  at  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  week.  He  was  too  indolent  and 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  91 

vacillating  to  set  himself  seriously  to  his  art,  too 
irascible  and  poignantly  self-conscious  to  make 
a  living,  too  much  addicted  to  lying  late  in 
bed,  to  the  incontinent  reading  of  poetry  and  to 
the  use  of  chloral,  to  be  anything  very  positive 
except  painful.  At  twenty-six  he  shot  himself  in 
a  frenzy,  and  the  whole  wretched  affair  had  ef- 
fectually shattered  his  mother's  health  and 
brought  on  the  decline  of  which  she  died.  Caro- 
line had  been  fond  of  him,  but  she  felt  a  certain 
relief  when  he  no  longer  wandered  about  the 
little  house,  commenting  ironically  upon  its 
shabbiness,  a  Turkish  cap  on  his  head  and  a 
cigarette  hanging  from  between  his  long,  trem- 
ulous fingers. 

After  her  mother's  death  Caroline  assumed 
the  management  of  that  bankrupt  establish- 
ment. The  funeral  expenses  were  unpaid,  and 
Auguste's  pupils  had  been  frightened  away  by 
the  shock  of  successive  disasters  and  the  gen- 
eral atmosphere  of  wretchedness  that  pervaded 
the  house.  Auguste  himself  was  writing  a  sym- 
phonic poem,  Icarus,  dedicated  to  the  memory 
of  his  son.  Caroline  was  barely  twenty  when 
she  was  called  upon  to  face  this  tangle  of 
difficulties,  but  she  reviewed  the  situation  can- 


92  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

didly.  The  house  had  served  its  time  at  the 
shrine  of  idealism;  vague,  distressing,  unsatis- 
fied yearnings  had  brought  it  low  enough.  Her 
mother,  thirty  years  before,  had  eloped  and 
left  Germany  with  her  music  teacher,  to  give 
herself  over  to  life-long,  drudging  bondage  at  the 
kitchen  range.  Ever  since  Caroline  could  re- 
member, the  law  in  the  house  had  been  a  sort  of 
mystic  worship  of  things  distant,  intangible 
and  unattainable.  The  family  had  lived  in  suc- 
cessive ebulitions  of  generous  enthusiasm,  in 
talk  of  masters  and  masterpieces,  only  to  come 
down  to  the  cold  facts  in  the  case ;  to  boiled  mut- 
ton and  to  the  necessity  of  turning  the  dining- 
room  carpet.  All  these  emotional  pyrotechnics 
had  ended  in  petty  jealousies,  in  neglected  duties 
and  in  cowardly  fear  of  the  little  grocer  on  the 
corner. 

From  her  childhood  she  had  hated  it,  that 
humiliating  and  uncertain  existence,  with  its 
glib  tongue  and  empty  pockets,  its  poetic  ideals 
and  sordid  realities,  its  indolence  and  poverty 
tricked  out  in  paper  roses.  Even  as  a  little  girl, 
when  vague  dreams  beset  her,  when  she  wanted 
to  lie  late  in  bed  and  commune  with  visions,  or 
to  leap  and  sing  because  the  sooty  little  trees 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  93 

along  the  street  were  putting  out  their  first  pale 
leaves  in  the  sunshine,  she  would  clench  her 
hands  and  go  to  help  her  mother  sponge  the 
spots  from  her  father's  waistcoat  or  press  Hein- 
rich's  trousers.  Her  mother  never  permitted  the 
slightest  question  concerning  anything  Auguste 
or  Heinrich  saw  fit  to  do,  but  from  the  time  Caro- 
line could  reason  at  all  she  could  not  help  think- 
ing that  many  things  went  wrong  at  home.  She 
knew,  for  example,  that  her  father's  pupils 
ought  not  to  be  kept  waiting  half  an  hour  while 
he  discussed  Schopenhauer  with  some  bearded 
socialist  over  a  dish  of  herrings  and  a  spotted 
table  cloth.  She  knew  that  Heinrich  ought  not 
to  give  a  dinner  on  Heine's  birthday,  when  the 
laundress  had  not  been  paid  for  a  month  and 
when  he  frequently  had  to  ask  his  mother  for 
car  fare.  Certainly  Caroline  had  served  her  ap- 
prenticeship to  idealism  and  to  all  the  embar- 
rassing inconsistencies  which  it  sometimes  en- 
tails, and  she  decided  to  deny  herself  this  diffuse, 
ineffectual  answer  to  the  sharp  questions  of  life. 
When  she  came  into  the  control  of  herself  and 
the  house,  she  refused  to  proceed  any  further 
with  her  musical  education.  Her  father,  who  had 
intended  to  make  a  concert  pianist  of  her,  set 


94  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

this  down  as  another  item  in  his  long  list  of  dis- 
appointments and  his  grievances  against  the 
world.  She  was  young  and  pretty,  and  she  had 
worn  turned  gowns  and  soiled  gloves  and  impro- 
vised hats  all  her  life.  She  wanted  the  luxury  of 
being  like  other  people,  of  being  honest  from 
her  hat  to  her  boots,  of  having  nothing  to  hide, 
not  even  in  the  matter  of  stockings,  and  she  was 
willing  to  work  for  it.  She  rented  a  little  studio 
away  from  that  house  of  misfortune,  and  began 
to  give  lessons.  She  managed  well  and  was  the 
sort  of  girl  people  liked  to  help.  The  bills  were 
paid  and  Auguste  went  on  composing,  growing 
indignant  only  when  she  refused  to  insist  that 
her  pupils  should  study  his  compositions  for 
the  piano.  She  began  to  get  engagements  in  New 
York  to  play  accompaniments  at  song  recitals. 
She  dressed  well,  made  herself  agreeable,  and 
gave  herself  a  chance.  She  never  permitted  her- 
self to  look  further  than  a  step  ahead,  and  set 
herself  with  all  the  strength  of  her  will  to  see 
things  as  they  are  and  meet  them  squarely  in  the 
broad  day.  There  were  two  things  she  feared 
even  more  than  poverty;  the  part  of  one  that  sets 
up  an  idol  and  the  part  of  one  that  bows  down 
and  worships  it. 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  95 

When  Caroline  was  twenty-four  she  married 
Howard  Noble,  then  a  widower  of  forty,  who 
had  been  for  ten  years  a  power  in  Wall  street. 
Then,  for  the  first  time,  she  had  paused  to  take 
breath.  It  took  a  substantialness  as  unquestion- 
able as  his;  his  money,  his  position,  his  energy, 
the  big  vigour  of  his  robust  person,  to  satisfy  her 
that  she  was  entirely  safe.  Then  she  relaxed  a 
little,  feeling  that  there  was  a  barrier  to  be 
counted  upon  between  her  and  that  world  of  vis- 
ions and  quagmires  and  failure. 

Caroline  had  been  married  for  six  years  when 
Raymond  d'Esquerre  came  to  stay  with  them. 
He  came  chiefly  because  Caroline  was  what  she 
was;  because  he,  too,  felt  occasionally  the  need 
of  getting  out  of  Klingsor's  garden,  of  dropping 
down  somewhere  for  a  time  near  a  quiet  nature, 
a  cool  head,  a  strong  hand.  The  hours  he  had 
spent  in  the  garden  lodge  were  hours  of  such 
concentrated  study  as,  in  his  fevered  life,  he 
seldom  got  in  anywhere.  She  had,  as  he  told 
Noble,  a  fine  appreciation  of  the  seriousness  of 
work. 

One  evening  two  weeks  after  d'Esquerre  had 
sailed,  Caroline  was  in  the  library  giving  her  hus- 
band an  account  of  the  work  she  had  laid  out 


96  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

for  the  gardeners.  She  superintended  the  care  of 
the  grounds  herself.  Her  garden,  indeed,  had  be- 
come quite  a  part  of  her;  a  sort  of  beautiful  ad- 
junct, like  gowns  or  jewels.  It  was  a  famous 
spot,  and  Noble  was  very  proud  of  it. 

"What  do  you  think,  Caroline,  of  having  the 
garden  lodge  torn  down  and  putting  a  new 
summer  house  there  at  the  end  of  the  arbour; 
a  big  rustic  affair  where  you  could  have  tea 
served  in  mid-summer?"  he  asked. 

"The  lodge?"  repeated  Caroline  looking  at 
him  quickly.  "Why,  that  seems  almost  a  shame, 
doesn't  it,  after  d'Esquerre  has  used  it  ?" 

Noble  put  down  his  book  with  a  smile  of 
amusement. 

"Are  you  going  to  be  sentimental  about  it? 
Why,  I'd  sacrifice  the  whole  place  to  see  that 
come  to  pass.  But  I  don't  believe  you  could  do 
it  for  an  hour  together." 

"I  don't  believe  so,  either,"  said  his  wife, 
smiling. 

Noble  took  up  his  book  again  and  Caroline 
went  into  the  music-room  to  practise.  She  was 
not  ready  to  have  the  lodge  torn  down.  She  had 
gone  there  for  a  quiet  hour  every  day  during  the 
two  weeks  since  d'Esquerre  had  left  them.  It 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  97 

was  the  sheerest  sentiment  she  had  ever  per- 
mitted herself.  She  was  ashamed  of  it,  but  she 
was  childishly  unwilling  to  let  it  go. 

Caroline  went  to  bed  soon  after  her  husband, 
but  she  was  not  able  to  sleep.  The  night  was 
close  and  warm,  presaging  storm.  The  wind  had 
fallen  and  the  water  slept,  fixed  and  motionless 
as  the  sand.  She  rose  and  thrust  her  feet  into 
slippers  and  putting  a  dressing-gown  over  her 
shoulders  opened  the  door  of  her  husband's 
room;  he  was  sleeping  soundly.  She  went  into 
the  hall  and  down  the  stairs;  then,  leaving  the 
house  through  a  side  door,  stepped  into  the  vine 
covered  arbour  that  led  to  the  garden  lodge.  The 
scent  of  the  June  roses  was  heavy  in  the  still  air, 
and  the  stones  that  paved  the  path  felt  pleasantly 
cool  through  the  thin  soles  of  her  slippers.  Heat- 
lightning  flashed  continuously  from  the  bank  of 
clouds  that  had  gathered  over  the  sea,  but  the 
shore  was  flooded  with  moonlight  and,  beyond, 
the  rim  of  the  Sound  lay  smooth  and  shining. 
Caroline  had  the  key  of  the  lodge,  and  the  door 
creaked  as  she  opened  it.  She  stepped  into  the 
long,  low  room  radiant  with  the  moonlight  which 
streamed  through  the  bow  window  and  lay  in 
a  silvery  pool  along  the  waxed  floor.    Even  that 


98  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

part  of  the  room  which  lay  in  the  shadow  was 
vaguely  illuminated;  the  piano,  the  tall  candle- 
sticks, the  picture  frames  and  white  casts  stand- 
ing out  as  clearly  in  the  half-light  as  did  the 
sycamores  and  black  poplars  of  the  garden 
against  the  still,  expectant  night  sky.  Caroline 
sat  down  to  think  it  all  over.  She  had  come 
here  to  do  just  that  every  day  of  the  two  weeks 
since  d'Esquerre's  departure,  but,  far  from  ever 
having  reached  a  conclusion,  she  had  succeeded 
only  in  losing  her  way  in  a  maze  of  memories 
—  sometimes  bewilderingly  confused,  sometimes 
too  acutely  distinct  —  where  there  was  neither 
path,  nor  clue,  nor  any  hope  of  finality.  She  had, 
she  realized,  defeated  a  life-long  regimen;  com- 
pletely confounded  herself  by  falling  unaware 
and  incontinently  into  that  luxury  of  revery 
which,  even  as  a  little  girl,  she  had  so  deter- 
minedly denied  herself ;  she  had  been  developing 
with  alarming  celerity  that  part  of  one  which 
sets  up  an  idol  and  that  part  of  one  which  bows 
down  and  worships  it. 

It  was  a  mistake,  she  felt,  ever  to  have  asked 
d'Esquerre  to  come  at  all.  She  had  an  angry 
feeling  that  she  had  done  it  rather  in  self-de- 
fiance, to  rid  herself  finally  of  that  instinctive 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  99 

fear  of  him  which  had  always  troubled  and  per- 
plexed her.  She  knew  that  she  had  reckoned  with 
herself  before  he  came;  but  she  had  been  equal 
to  so  much  that  she  had  never  really  doubted  she 
would  be  equal  to  this.  She  had  come  to  believe, 
indeed,  almost  arrogantly  in  her  own  mallea- 
bility and  endurance;  she  had  done  so  much 
with  herself  that  she  had  come  to  think  that 
there  was  nothing  which  she  could  not  do;  like 
swimmers,  overbold,  who  reckon  upon  their 
strength  and  their  power  to  hoard  it,  forgetting 
the  ever  changing  moods  of  their  adversary,  the 
sea. 

And  d'Esquerre  was  a  man  to  reckon  with. 
Caroline  did  not  deceive  herself  now  upon  that 
score.  She  admitted  it  humbly  enough,  and  since 
she  had  said  good-bye  to  him  she  had  not  been 
free  for  a  moment  from  the  sense  of  his  formid- 
able power.  It  formed  the  undercurrent  of  her 
consciousness;  whatever  she  might  be  doing  or 
thinking,  it  went  on,  involuntarily,  like  her 
breathing;  sometimes  welling  up  until  suddenly 
she  found  herself  suffocating.  There  was  a  mo- 
ment of  this  to-night,  and  Caroline  rose  and 
stood  shuddering,  looking  about  her  in  the  blue 
duskiness  of  the  silent  room.  She  had  not  been 


100  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

here  at  night  before,  and  the  spirit  of  the  place 
seemed  more  troubled  and  insistent  than  ever 
it  had  been  in  the  quiet  of  the  afternoons. 
Caroline  brushed  her  hair  back  from  her  damp 
forehead  and  went  over  to  the  bow  window. 
After  raising  it  she  sat  down  upon  the  low  seat. 
Leaning  her  head  against  the  sill,  and  loosening 
her  night-gown  at  the  throat,  she  half  closed 
her  eyes  and  looked  off  into  the  troubled 
night,  watching  the  play  of  the  sheet-lightning 
upon  the  massing  clouds  between  the  pointed 
tops  of  the  poplars. 

Yes,  she  knew,  she  knew  well  enough,  of  what 
absurdities  this  spell  was  woven;  she  mocked, 
even  while  she  winced.  His  power  she  knew,  lay 
not  so  much  in  anything  that  he  actually  had  — 
though  he  had  so  much  —  or  in  anything  that  he 
actually  was;  but  in  what  he  suggested,  in  what 
he  seemed  picturesque  enough  to  have  or  be  — 
and  that  was  just  anything  that  one  chose  to  be- 
lieve or  to  desire.  His  appeal  was  all  the  more 
persuasive  and  alluring  that  it  was  to  the  imag- 
ination alone,  that  it  was  as  indefinite  and  im- 
personal as  those  cults  of  idealism  which  so  have 
their  way  with  women.  What  he  had  was  that, 
in  his  mere  personality,  he  quickened  and  in  a 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  101 

measure  gratified  that  something  without  which 
—  to  women  —  life  is  no  better  than  sawdust,  and 
to  the  desire  for  which  most  of  their  mistakes  and 
tragedies  and  astonishingly  poor  bargains  are 
due. 

D'Esquerre  had  become  the  centre  of  a  move- 
ment, and  the  Metropolitan  had  become  the 
temple  of  a  cult.  When  he  could  be  induced  to 
cross  the  Atlantic,  the  opera  season  in  New 
York  was  successful;  when  he  could  not,  the 
management  lost  money;  so  much  every  one 
knew.  It  was  understood,  too,  that  his  superb 
art  had  disproportionately  little  to  do  with  his 
peculiar  position.  Women  swayed  the  balance 
this  way  or  that;  the  opera,  the  orchestra,  even 
his  own  glorious  art,  achieved  at  such  a  cost, 
were  but  the  accessories  of  himself;  like  the 
scenery  and  costumes  and  even  the  soprano,  they 
all  went  to  produce  atmosphere,  were  the  mere 
mechanics  of  the  beautiful  illusion. 

Caroline  understood  all  this;  to-night  was  not 
the  first  time  that  she  had  put  it  to  herself  so. 
She  had  seen  the  same  feeling  in  other  people; 
watched  for  it  in  her  friends,  studied  it  in  the 
house  night  after  night  when  he  sang,  candidly 
putting  herself  among  a  thousand  others. 


102  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

D'Esquerre's  arrival  in  the  early  winter  was 
the  signal  for  a  feminine  hegira  toward  New 
York.  On  the  nights  when  he  sang,  women 
flocked  to  the  Metropolitan  from  mansions  and 
hotels,  from  typewriter  desks,  school  -  rooms, 
shops  and  fitting-rooms.  They  were  of  all  con- 
ditions and  complexions.  Women  of  the  world 
who  accepted  him  knowingly,  as  they  some- 
times took  champagne  for  its  agreeable  effect; 
sisters  of  charity  and  overworked  shop-girls,  who 
received  him  devoutly;  withered  women  who 
had  taken  doctorate  degrees  and  who  worshipped 
furtively  through  prism  spectacles;  business 
women  and  women  of  affairs,  the  Amazons  who 
dwelt  afar  from  men  in  the  stony  fastnesses  of 
apartment  houses.  They  all  entered  into  the 
same  romance;  dreamed,  in  terms  as  various  as 
the  hues  of  phantasy,  the  same  dream ;  drew  the 
same  quick  breath  when  he  stepped  upon  the 
stage,  and,  at  his  exit,  felt  the  same  dull  pain  of 
shouldering  the  pack  again. 

There  were  the  maimed,  even ;  those  who 
came  on  crutches,  who  were  pitted  by  smallpox 
or  grotesquely  painted  by  cruel  birth  stains. 
These,  too,  entered  with  him  into  enchantment. 
Stout  matrons  became  slender  girls  again;  worn 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  103 

spinsters  felt  their  cheeks  flush  with  the  tender- 
ness of  their  lost  youth.  Young  and  old,  however 
hideous,  however  fair,  they  yielded  up  their 
heat  —  whether  quick  or  latent  —  sat  hunger- 
ing for  the  mystic  bread  wherewith  he  fed  them 
at  this  eucharist  of  sentiment. 

Sometimes  when  the  house  was  crowded  from 
the  orchestra  to  the  last  row  of  the  gallery,  when 
the  air  was  charged  with  this  ecstasy  of  fancy, 
he  himself  was  the  victim  of  the  burning  re- 
flection of  his  power.  They  acted  upon  him  in 
turn;  he  felt  their  fervent  and  despairing  appeal 
to  him ;  it  stirred  him  as  the  spring  drives  the  sap 
up  into  an  old  tree;  he,  too,  burst  into  bloom. 
For  the  moment  he,  too,  believed  again,  desired 
again,  he  knew  not  what,  but  something. 

But  it  was  not  in  these  exalted  moments  that 
Caroline  had  learned  to  fear  him  most.  It  was  in 
the  quiet,  tired  reserve,  the  dullness,  even,  that 
kept  him  company  between  these  outbursts 
that  she  found  that  exhausting  drain  upon  her 
sympathies  which  was  the  very  pith  and  sub- 
stance of  their  alliance.  It  was  the  tacit  admission 
of  disappointment  under  all  this  glamour  of  suc- 
cess —  the  helplessness  of  the  enchanter  to  at  all 
enchant  himself  —  that  awoke  in  her  an  illogical, 


104  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

womanish  desire  to  in  some  way  compensate,  to 
make  it  up  to  him. 

She  had  observed  drastically  to  herself  that  it 
was  her  eighteenth  year  he  awoke  in  her  —  those 
hard  years  she  had  spent  in  turning  gowns  and 
placating  tradesmen,  and  which  she  had  never  had 
time  to  live.  After  all,  she  reflected,  it  was  better 
to  allow  one's  self  a  little  youth ;  to  dance  a  little 
at  the  carnival  and  to  live  these  things  when 
they  are  natural  and  lovely,  not  to  have  them 
coming  back  on  one  and  demanding  arrears 
when  they  are  humiliating  and  impossible.  She 
went  over  to-night  all  the  catalogue  of  her  self- 
deprivations ;  recalled  how,  in  the  light  of  her 
father's  example,  she  had  even  refused  to  hu- 
mour her  innocent  taste  for  improvising  at  the 
piano;  how,  when  she  began  to  teach,  after  her 
mother's  death,  she  had  struck  out  one  little  in- 
dulgence after  another,  reducing  her  life  to  a 
relentless  routine,  unvarying  as  clockwork.  It 
seemed  to  her  that  ever  since  d'Esquerre  first 
came  into  the  house  she  had  been  haunted  by  an 
imploring  little  girlish  ghost  that  followed  her 
about,  wringing  its  hands  and  entreating  for  an 
hour  of  life. 

The  storm  had  held  off  unconscionably  long; 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  105 

the  air  within  the  lodge  was  stifling,  and  without 
the  garden  waited,  breathless.  Everything  seem- 
ed pervaded  by  a  poignant  distress;  the  hush  of 
feverish,  intolerable  expectation.  The  still  earth, 
the  heavy  flowers,  even  the  growing  darkness, 
breathed  the  exhaustion  of  protracted  waiting. 
Caroline  felt  that  she  ought  to  go;  that  it  was 
wrong  to  stay;  that  the  hour  and  the  place  were 
as  treacherous  as  her  own  reflections.  She  rose 
and  began  to  pace  the  floor,  stepping  softly,  as 
though  in  fear  of  awakening  some  one,  her  fig- 
ure, in  its  thin  drapery,  diaphanously  vague 
and  white.  Still  unable  to  shake  off  the  obsession 
of  the  intense  stillness,  she  sat  down  at  the  piano 
and  began  to  run  over  the  first  act  of  the  WalJciire, 
the  last  of  his  roles  they  had  practised  together; 
playing  listlessly  and  absently  at  first,  but  with 
gradually  increasing  seriousness.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  still  heat  of  the  summer  night,  per- 
haps it  was  the  heavy  odours  from  the  garden  that 
came  in  through  the  open  windows ;  but  as  she 
played  there  grew  and  grew  the  feeling  that  he 
was  there,  beside  her,  standing  in  his  accus- 
tomed place.  In  the  duett  at  the  end  of  the  first 
act  she  heard  him  clearly:  "  Thou  art  the  Spring 
for  which  I  sighed  in  Winter's  cold  embraces." 


106  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Once  as  he  sang  it,  he  had  put  his  arm  about  her, 
his  one  hand  under  her  heart,  while  with  the 
other  he  took  her  right  from  the  keyboard,  hold- 
ing her  as  he  always  held  Sieglinde  when  he 
drew  her  toward  the  window.  She  had  been  won- 
derfully the  mistress  of  herself  at  the  time; 
neither  repellant  nor  acquiescent.  She  remem- 
bered that  she  had  rather  exulted,  then,  in 
her  self-control  —  which  he  had  seemed  to  take 
for  granted,  though  there  was  perhaps  the 
whisper  of  a  question  from  the  hand  under 
her  heart.  "  Thou  art  the  Spring  for  which  I 
sighed  in  Winter's  cold  embraces."  Caroline 
lifted  her  hands  quickly  from  the  keyboard,  and 
she  bowed  her  head  in  them,  sobbing. 

The  storm  broke  and  the  rain  beat  in,  spat- 
tering her  night-dress  until  she  rose  and  lowered 
the  windows.  She  dropped  upon  the  couch  and 
began  fighting  over  again  the  battles  of  other 
days,  while  the  ghosts  of  the  slain  rose  as  from  a 
sowing  of  dragon's  teeth.  The  shadows  of  things, 
always  so  scorned  and  flouted,  bore  down  upon 
her  merciless  and  triumphant.  It  was  not  enough; 
this  happy,  useful,  well-ordered  life  was  not 
enough.  It  did  not  satisfy,  it  was  not  even  real. 
No,  the  other  things,  the  shadows  —  they  were 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  107 

the  realities.  Her  father,  poor  Heinrich,  even  her 
mother,  who  had  been  able  to  sustain  her  poor 
romance  and  keep  her  little  illusions  amid  the 
tasks  of  a  scullion,  were  nearer  happiness  than 
she.  Her  sure  foundation  was  but  made  ground, 
after  all,  and  the  people  in  Klingsor's  garden 
were  more  fortunate,  however  barren  the  sands 
from  which  they  conjured  their  paradise. 

The  lodge  was  still  and  silent;  her  fit  of  weep- 
ing over,  Caroline  made  no  sound,  and  within 
the  room,  as  without  in  the  garden,  was  the  black- 
ness of  storm.  Only  now  and  then  a  flash  of 
lightning  showed  a  woman's  slender  figure  rigid 
on  the  couch,  her  face  buried  in  her  hands. 

Toward  morning,  when  the  occasional  rum- 
bling of  thunder  was  heard  no  more  and  the  beat 
of  the  rain  drops  upon  the  orchard  leaves  was 
steadier,  she  fell  asleep  and  did  not  waken  until 
the  first  red  streaks  of  dawn  shone  through  the 
twisted  boughs  of  the  apple  trees.  There  was  a 
moment  between  world  and  world,  when,  neither 
asleep  nor  awake,  she  felt  her  dream  grow  thin, 
melting  away  from  her,  felt  the  warmth  under 
her  heart  growing  cold.  Something  seemed  to 
slip  from  the  clinging  hold  of  her  arms,  and  she 
groaned    protestingly   through    her  parted  lips, 


108  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

following  it  a  little  way  with  fluttering  hands. 
Then  her  eyes  opened  wide  and  she  sprang  up 
and  sat  holding  dizzily  to  the  cushions  of  the 
couch,  staring  down  at  her  bare,  cold  feet,  at  her 
labouring  breast,  rising  and  falling  under  her 
open  night-dress. 

The  dream  was  gone,  but  the  feverish  reality 
of  it  still  pervaded  her  and  she  held  it  as  the  vib- 
rating string  holds  a  tone.  In  the  last  hour  the 
shadows  had  had  their  way  with  Caroline.  They 
had  shown  her  the  nothingness  of  time  and  space, 
of  system  and  discipline,  of  closed  doors  and 
broad  waters.  Shuddering,  she  thought  of  the 
Arabian  fairy  tale  in  which  the  Genii  brought 
the  princess  of  China  to  the  sleeping  prince  of 
Damascus,  and  carried  her  through  the  air  back 
to  her  palace  at  dawn.  Caroline  closed  her  eyes 
and  dropped  her  elbows  weakly  upon  her  knees, 
her  shoulders  sinking  together.  The  horror 
was  that  it  had  not  come  from  without,  but  from 
within.  The  dream  was  no  blind  chance;  it 
was  the  expression  of  something  she  had  kept 
so  close  a  prisoner  that  she  had  never  seen  it  her- 
self;  it  was  the  wail  from  the  donjon  deeps  when 
the  watch  slept.  Only  as  the  outcome  of  such  a 
night  of  sorcery  could  the  thing  have  been  loosed 


THE  GARDEN  LODGE  109 

to  straighten  its  limbs  and  measure  itself  with 
her;  so  heavy  were  the  chains  upon  it,  so  many  a 
fathom  deep  it  was  crushed  down  into  darkness. 
The  fact  that  d'Esquerre  happened  to  be  on  the 
other  side  of  the  world  meant  nothing;  had  he 
been  here,  beside  her,  it  could  scarcely  have  hurt 
her  self-respect  so  much.  As  it  was,  she  was  with- 
out even  the  extenuation  of  an  outer  impulse,  and 
she  could  scarcely  have  despised  herself  more  had 
she  come  to  him  here  in  the  night  three  weeks 
ago  and  thrown  herself  down  upon  the  stone 
slab  at  the  door  there. 

Caroline  rose  unsteadily  and  crept  guiltily 
from  the  lodge  and  along  the  path  under  the 
arbour,  terrified  lest  the  servants  should  be  stir- 
ring, trembling  with  the  chill  air,  while  the  wet 
shrubbery,  brushing  against  her,  drenched  her 
night-dress  until  it  clung  about  her  limbs. 

At  breakfast  her  husband  looked  across  the 
table  at  her  with  concern.  "It  seems  to  me  that 
you  are  looking  rather  fagged,  Caroline.  It  was 
a  beastly  night  to  sleep.  Why  don't  you  go  up  to 
the  mountains  until  this  hot  weather  is  over  ?  By 
the  way,  were  you  in  earnest  about  letting  the 
lodge  stand ?" 

Caroline  laughed  quietly.  "No,  I  find  I  was 


110  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

not  very  serious.  I  haven't  sentiment  enough  to 
forego  a  summer-house.  Will  you  tell  Baker  to 
come  to-morrow  to  talk  it  over  with  me?  If  we 
are  to  have  a  house  party,  I  should  like  to  put 
him  to  work  on  it  at  once." 

Noble  gave  her  a  glance,  half  humorous, 
half  vexed.  "Do  you  know  I  am  rather  disap- 
pointed?" he  said.  "I  had  almost  hoped  that, 
just  for  once,  you  know,  you  would  be  a  little  bit 
foolish," 

"Not  now  that  I've  slept  over  it,"  replied 
Caroline,  and  they  both  rose  from  the  table, 
laughing. 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT" 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT" 

Everett  Hilgarde  was  conscious  that  the  man  in 
the  seat  across  the  aisle  was  looking  at  him  intent- 
ly. He  was  a  large,  florid  man,  wore  a  conspicu- 
ous diamond  solitaire  upon  his  third  finger,  and 
Everett  judged  him  to  be  a  travelling  salesman  of 
some  sort.  He  had  the  air  of  an  adaptable  fellow 
who  had  been  about  the  world  and  who  could 
keep  cool  and  clean  under  almost  any  circum- 
stances. 

The  "High  Line  Flyer,"  as  this  train  was  de- 
risively called  among  railroad  men,  was  jerking 
along  through  the  hot  afternoon  over  the  mo- 
notonous country  between  Holdridge  and  Chey- 
enne. Besides  the  blond  man  and  himself  the 
only  occupants  of  the  car  were  two  dusty,  be- 
draggled-looking girls  who  had  been  to  the  Ex- 
position at  Chicago,  and  who  were  earnestly  dis- 
cussing the  cost  of  their  first  trip  out  of  Colorado. 
The  four  uncomfortable  passengers  were  covered 


114  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

with  a  sediment  of  fine,  yellow  dust  which  clung 
to  their  hair  and  eyebrows  like  gold  powder.  It 
blew  up  in  clouds  from  the  bleak,  lifeless  country 
through  which  they  passed,  until  they  were  one 
colour  with  the  sage-brush  and  sand-hills.  The 
grey  and  yellow  desert  was  varied  only  by  occa- 
sional ruins  of  deserted  towns,  and  the  little  red 
boxes  of  station-houses,  where  the  spindling  trees 
and  sickly  vines  in  the  blue-grass  yards  made 
little  green  reserves  fenced  off  in  that  confusing 
wilderness  of  sand. 

As  the  slanting  rays  of  the  sun  beat  in  stronger 
and  stronger  through  the  car- windows,  the  blond 
gentleman  asked  the  ladies'  permission  to  remove 
his  coat,  and  sat  in  his  lavender  striped  shirt- 
sleeves, with  a  black  silk  handkerchief  tucked 
carefully  about  his  collar.  He  had  seemed  inter- 
ested in  Everett  since  they  had  boarded  the  train 
at  Holdridge,  and  kept  glancing  at  him  curiously 
and  then  looking  reflectively  out  of  the  window, 
as  though  he  were  trying  to  recall  something.  But 
wherever  Everett  went  some  one  was  almost  sure 
to  look  at  him  with  that  curious  interest,  and  it 
had  ceased  to  embarrass  or  annoy  him.  Presently 
the  stranger,  seeming  satisfied  with  his  observa- 
tion, leaned  back  in  his  seat,  half  closed  his  eyes, 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  115 

and  began  softly  to  whistle  the  Spring  Song  from 
Proserpine,  the  cantata  that  a  dozen  years  be- 
fore had  made  its  young  composer  famous  in  a 
night.  Everett  had  heard  that  air  on  guitars  in  Old 
Mexico,  on  mandolins  at  college  glees,  on  cottage 
organs  in  New  England  hamlets,  and  only  two 
weeks  ago  he  had  heard  it  played  on  sleighbells  at 
a  variety  theatre  in  Denver.  There  was  literally 
no  way  of  escaping  his  brother's  precocity. 
Adriance  could  live  on  the  other  side  of  the  At- 
lantic, where  his  youthful  indiscretions  were 
forgotten  in  his  mature  achievements,  but  his 
brother  had  never  been  able  to  outrun  Proser- 
pine, and  here  he  found  it  again  in  the  Colo- 
rado sand-hills.  Not  that  Everett  was  [exactly 
ashamed  of  Proserpine  \  only  a  man  of  gen- 
ius could  have  written  it,  but  it  was  the  sort  of 
thing  that  a  man  of  genius  outgrows  as  soon  as 
he  can. 

Everett  unbent  a  trifle,  and  smiled  at  his  neigh- 
bour across  the  aisle.  Immediately  the  large  man 
rose  and  coming  over  dropped  into  the  seat  fac- 
ing Hilgarde,  extending  his  card. 

"Dusty  ride,  isn't  it?  I  don't  mind  it  myself; 
I'm  used  to  it.  Born  and  bred  in  de  briar  patch, 
like  Br'er  Rabbit.  I've  been  trying  to  place  you 


116  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

for  a  long  time ;  I  think  I  must  have  met  you  be- 
fore." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Everett,  taking  the  card; 
"my  name  is  Hilgarde.  You've  probably  met  my 
brother,  Adriance;  people  often  mistake  me  for 
him." 

The  travelling-man  brought  his  hand  down 
upon  his  knee  with  such  vehemence  that  the  soli- 
taire blazed. 

"So  I  was  right  after  all,  and  if  you're  not 
Adriance  Hilgarde  you're  his  double.  I  thought 
I  couldn't  be  mistaken.  Seen  him  ?  Well,  I  guess ! 
I  never  missed  one  of  his  recitals  at  the  Audi- 
torium, and  he  played  the  piano  score  of  Pros- 
erpine through  to  us  once  at  the  Chicago  Press 
Club.  I  used  to  be  on  the  Commercial  there  before 
I  began  to  travel  for  the  publishing  department  of 
the  concern.  So  you're  Hilgarde's  brother,  and 
here  I've  run  into  you  at  the  jumping-off  place. 
Sounds  like  a  newspaper  yarn,  doesn't  it  ?" 

The  travelling-man  laughed  and  offered  Ever- 
ett a  cigar  and  plied  him  with  questions  on  the 
only  subject  that  people  ever  seemed  to  care  to 
talk  to  Everett  about.  At  length  the  salesman  and 
the  two  girls  alighted  at  a  Colorado  way  station, 
and  Everett  went  on  to  Cheyenne  alone. 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  117 

The  train  pulled  into  Cheyenne  at  nine  o'clock, 
late  by  a  matter  of  four  hours  or  so;  but  no  one 
seemed  particularly  concerned  at  its  tardiness 
except  the  station  agent,  who  grumbled  at  being 
kept  in  the  office  over  time  on  a  summer  night. 
When  Everett  alighted  from  the  train  he  walked 
down  the  platform  and  stopped  at  the  track 
crossing,  uncertain  as  to  what  direction  he  should 
take  to  reach  a  hotel.  A  phaeton  stood  near  the 
crossing  and  a  woman  held  the  reins.  She  was 
dressed  in  white,  and  her  figure  was  clearly  sil- 
houetted against  the  cushions,  though  it  was  too 
dark  to  see  her  face.  Everett  had  scarcely  no- 
ticed her,  when  the  switch-engine  came  puffing 
up  from  the  opposite  direction,  and  the  head- 
light threw  a  strong  glare  of  light  on  his  face. 
Suddenly  the  woman  in  the  phaeton  uttered  a 
low  cry  and  dropped  the  reins.  Everett  started  for- 
ward and  caught  the  horse's  head,  but  the  animal 
only  lifted  its  ears  and  whisked  its  tail  in  impa- 
tient surprise.  The  woman  sat  perfectly  still,  her 
head  sunk  between  her  shoulders  and  her  hand- 
kerchief pressed  to  her  face.  Another  woman 
came  out  of  the  depot  and  hurried  toward  the 
phaeton,  crying,  "Katharine,  dear,  what  is  the 
matter?" 


118  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Everett  hesitated  a  moment  in  painful  em- 
barrassment, then  lifted  his  hat  and  passed  on. 
He  was  accustomed  to  sudden  recognitions  in  the 
most  impossible  places,  especially  by  women,  but 
this  cry  out  of  the  night  had  shaken  him. 

While  Everett  was  breakfasting  the  next  morn- 
ing, the  head  waiter  leaned  over  his  chair  to  mur- 
mur that  there  was  a  gentleman  waiting  to  see 
him  in  the  parlour.  Everett  finished  his  coffee, 
and  went  in  the  direction  indicated,  where  he 
found  his  visitor  restlessly  pacing  the  floor.  His 
whole  manner  betrayed  a  high  degree  of  agita- 
tion, though  his  physique  was  not  that  of  a 
man  whose  nerves  lie  near  the  surface.  He  was 
something  below  medium  height,  square-should- 
ered and  solidly  built.  His  thick,  closely  cut  hair 
was  beginning  to  show  grey  about  the  ears,  and 
his  bronzed  face  was  heavily  lined.  His  square 
brown  hands  were  locked  behind  him,  and  he 
held  his  shoulders  like  a  man  conscious  of  re- 
sponsibilities, yet,  as  he  turned  to  greet  Everett, 
there  was  an  incongruous  diffidence  in  his  ad- 
dress. 

"Good-morning,  Mr.  Hilgarde,"  he  said,  ex- 
tending his  hand;  "I  found  your  name  on  the 
hotel  register.  My  name  is  Gaylord.  I'm  afraid 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  119 

my  sister  startled  you  at  the  station  last  night, 
Mr.  Hilgarde,  and  I've  come  around  to  apolo- 
gize." 

"  Ah !  the  young  lady  in  the  phaeton  ?  I'm  sure 
I  didn't  know  whether  I  had  anything  to  do  with 
her  alarm  or  not.  If  I  did,  it  is  I  who  owe  the 
apology." 

The  man  coloured  a  little  under  the  dark 
brown  of  his  face. 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  you  could  help,  sir,  I  fully 
understand  that.  You  see,  my  sister  used  to  be  a 
pupil  of  your  brother's,  and  it  seems  you  favour 
him ;  and  when  the  switch-engine  threw  a  light  on 
your  face  it  startled  her." 

Everett  wheeled  about  in  his  chair.  "Oh! 
Katharine  Gaylord!  Is  it  possible!  Now  it's  you 
who  have  given  me  a  turn.  Why,  I  used  to  know 
her  when  I  was  a  boy.  What  on  earth  —  ' 

"Is  she  doing  here  ?"  said  Gaylord,  grimly  fill- 
ing out  the  pause.  "  You've  got  at  the  heart  of  the 
matter.  You  knew  my  sister  had  been  in  bad 
health  for  a  long  time?" 

"No,  I  had  never  heard  a  word  of  that.  The 
last  I  knew  of  her  she  was  singing  in  London.  My 
brother  and  I  correspond  infrequently,  and  sel- 
dom get  beyond  family  matters.  I  am  deeply 


120  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

sorry  to  hear  this.  There  are  many  reasons  why  I 
am  concerned  than  I  can  tell  you. " 

The  lines  in  Charley  Gaylord's  brow  relaxed 
a  little. 

"  What  I'm  trying  to  say,  Mr.  Hilgarde,  is  that 
she  wants  to  see  you.  I  hate  to  ask  you,  but  she's 
so  set  on  it.  We  live  several  miles  out  of  town, 
but  my  rig's  below,  and  I  can  take  you  out  any 
time  you  can  go." 

"I  can  go  now,  and  it  will  give  me  real  pleas- 
ure to  do  so, "said  Everett,  quickly.  "I'll  get  my 
hat  and  be  with  you  in  a  moment. " 

When  he  came  downstairs  Everett  found  a  cart 
at  the  door,  and  Charley  Gaylord  drew  a  long 
sigh  of  relief  as  he  gathered  up  the  reins  and  set- 
tled back  into  his  own  element. 

"You  see,  I  think  I'd  better  tell  you  some- 
thing about  my  sister  before  you  see  her,  and  I 
don't  know  just  where  to  begin.  She  travelled  in 
Europe  with  your  brother  and  his  wife,  and  sang 
at  a  lot  of  his  concerts;  but  I  don't  know  just 
how  much  you  know  about  her. " 

"Very  little,  except  that  my  brother  always 
thought  her  the  most  gifted  of  his  pupils,  and  that 
when  I  knew  her  she  was  very  young  and  very 
beautiful  and  turned  my  head  sadly  for  a  while. " 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  121 

Everett  saw  that  Gaylord's  mind  was  quite  en- 
grossed by  his  grief.  He  was  wrought  up  to  the 
point  where  his  reserve  and  sense  of  proportion 
had  quite  left  him,  and  his  trouble  was  the  one 
vital  thing  in  the  world.  "  That's  the  whole  thing," 
he  went  on,  flecking  his  horses  with  the  whip. 

"  She  was  a  great  woman,  as  you  say,  and  she 
didn't  come  of  a  great  family.  She  had  to  fight  her 
own  way  from  the  first.  She  got  to  Chicago,  and 
then  to  New  York,  and  then  to  Europe,  where 
she  went  up  like  lightning,  and  got  a  taste  for  it 
all;  and  now  she's  dying  here  like  a  rat  in  a  hole, 
out  of  her  own  world,  and  she  can't  fall  back  into 
ours.  We've  grown  apart,  some  way  —  miles  and 
miles  apart  —  and  I'm  afraid  she's  fearfully  un- 
happy." 

"  It's  a  very  tragic  story  that  you  are  telling  me, 
Gaylord, "  said  Everett.  They  were  well  out  into 
the  country  now,  spinning  along  over  the  dusty 
plains  of  red  grass,  with  the  ragged  blue  outline  of 
the  mountains  before  them. 

"Tragic!"  cried  Gaylord,  starting  up  in  his 
seat,  "  my  God,  man,  nobody  will  ever  know  how 
tragic.  It's  a  tragedy  I  live  with  and  eat  with 
and  sleep  with,  until  I've  lost  my  grip  on  every- 
thing. You  see  she  had  made  a  good  bit  of  money, 


122  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

but  she  spent  it  all  going  to  health  resorts.  It's 
her  lungs,  you  know.  I've  got  money  enough  to 
send  her  anywhere,  but  the  doctors  all  say  it's 
no  use.  She  hasn't  the  ghost  of  a  chance.  It's 
just  getting  through  the  days  now.  I  had  no  no- 
tion she  was  half  so  bad  before  she  came  to  me. 
She  just  wrote  that  she  was  all  run  down.  Now 
that  she's  here,  I  think  she'd  be  happier  any- 
where under  the  sun,  but  she  won't  leave.  She  says 
it's  easier  to  let  go  of  life  here,  and  that  to  go  East 
would  be  dying  twice.  There  was  a  time  when  I 
was  a  brakeman  with  a  run  out  of  Bird  City, 
Iowa,  and  she  was  a  little  thing  I  could  carry  on 
my  shoulder,  when  I  could  get  her  everything  on 
earth  she  wanted,  and  she  hadn't  a  wish  my  $80 
a  month  didn't  cover;  and  now,  when  I've  got  a 
little  property  together,  I  can't  buy  her  a  night's 
sleep!" 

Everett  saw  that,  whatever  Charley  Gaylord's 
present  status  in  the  world  might  be,  he  had 
brought  the  brakeman's  heart  up  the  ladder  with 
him,  and  the  brakeman's  frank  avowal  of  senti- 
ment. Presently  Gaylord  went  on : 

'You  can  understand  how  she  has  outgrown 
her  family.  We're  all  a  pretty  common  sort,  rail- 
roaders from  away  back.  My  father  was  a  con- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT  123 

ductor.  He  died  when  we  were  kids.  Maggie,  my 
other  sister,  who  lives  with  me,  was  a  telegraph 
operator  here  while  I  was  getting  my  grip  on 
things.  We  had  no  education  to  speak  of.  I  have 
to  hire  a  stenographer  because  I  can't  spell 
straight  —  the  Almighty  couldn't  teach  me  to 
spell.  The  things  that  make  up  life  to  Kate  are  all 
Greek  to  me,  and  there's  scarcely  a  point  where 
we  touch  any  more,  except  in  our  recollections  of 
the  old  times  when  we  were  all  young  and  happy 
together,  and  Kate  sang  in  a  church  choir  in  Bird 
City.  But  I  believe,  Mr.  Hilgarde,  that  if  she  can 
see  just  one  person  like  you,  who  knows  about 
the  things  and  people  she's  interested  in,  it  will 
give  her  about  the  only  comfort  she  can  have 
now. " 

The  reins  slackened  in  Charley  Gaylord's  hand 
as  they  drew  up  before  a  showily  painted  house 
with  many  gables  and  a  round  tower.  "Here  we 
are,"  he  said,  turning  to  Everett,  "and  I  guess 
we  understand  each  other. " 

They  were  met  at  the  door  by  a  thin,  colour- 
less woman,  whom  Gaylord  introduced  as  "My 
sister,  Maggie. "  She  asked  her  brother  to  show 
Mr.  Hilgarde  into  the  music-room,  where  Kath- 
arine wished  to  see  him  alone. 


124  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

When  Everett  entered  the  music-room  he  gave 
a  little  start  of  surprise,  feeling  that  he  had  step- 
ped from  the  glaring  Wyoming  sunlight  into  some 
New  York  studio  that  he  had  always  known.  He 
wondered  which  it  was  of  those  countless  studios, 
high  up  under  the  roofs,  over  banks  and  shops 
and  wholesale  houses,  that  this  room  resembled, 
and  he  looked  incredulously  out  of  the  window  at 
the  grey  plain  that  ended  in  the  great  upheaval  of 
the  Rockies. 

The  haunting  air  of  familiarity  about  the  room 
perplexed  him.  Was  it  a  copy  of  some  particular 
studio  he  knew,  or  was  it  merely  the  studio  at- 
mosphere that  seemed  so  individual  and  poig- 
nantly reminiscent  here  in  Wyoming  ?  He  sat 
down  in  a  reading-chair  and  looked  keenly  about 
him.  Suddenly  his  eye  fell  upon  a  large  photo- 
graph of  his  brother  above  the  piano.  Then  it  all 
became  clear  to  him :  this  was  veritably  his  broth- 
er's room.  If  it  were  not  an  exact  copy  of  one  of 
the  many  studios  that  Adriance  had  fitted  up  in 
various  parts  of  the  world,  wearying  of  them  and 
leaving  almost  before  the  renovator's  varnish  had 
dried,  it  was  at  least  in  the  same  tone.  In  every 
detail  Adriance's  taste  was  so  manifest  that  the 
room  seemed  to  exhale  his  personality. 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  125 

Among  the  photographs  on  the  wall  there  was 
one  of  Katharine  Gaylord,  taken  in  the  days 
when  Everett  had  known  her,  and  when  the  flash 
of  her  eye  or  the  flutter  of  her  skirt  was  enough 
to  set  his  boyish  heart  in  a  tumult.  Even  now,  he 
stood  before  the  portrait  with  a  certain  degree  of 
embarrassment.  It  was  the  face  of  a  woman  al- 
ready old  in  her  first  youth,  thoroughly  sophisti- 
cated and  a  trifle  hard,  and  it  told  of  what  her 
brother  had  called  her  fight.  The  camaraderie  of 
her  frank,  confident  eyes  was  qualified  by  the 
deep  lines  about  her  mouth  and  the  curve  of  the 
lips,  which  was  both  sad  and  cynical.  Certainly 
she  had  more  good-will  than  confidence  toward 
the  world,  and  the  bravado  of  her  smile  could 
not  conceal  the  shadow  of  an  unrest  that  was 
almost  discontent.  The  chief  charm  of  the  wo- 
man, as  Everett  had  known  her,  lay  in  her  su- 
perb figure  and  in  her  eyes,  which  possessed  a 
warm,  life-giving  quality  like  the  sunlight;  eyes 
which  glowed  with  a  sort  of  perpetual  salutat 
to  the  world.  Her  head,  Everett  remembered 
as  peculiarly  well  shaped  and  proudly  poised. 
There  had  been  always  a  little  of  the  impera- 
trix  about  her,  and  her  pose  in  the  photograph 
revived  all  his  old  impressions  of  her  unattached- 


126  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

ness,  of  how  absolutely  and  valiantly  she  stood 
alone. 

Everett  was  still  standing  before  the  picture,  his 
hands  behind  him  and  his  head  inclined,  when  he 
heard  the  door  open.  A  very  tall  woman  advanced 
toward  him,  holding  out  her  hand.  As  she  started 
to  speak  she  coughed  slightly,  then,  laughing, 
said,  in  a  low,  rich  voice,  a  trifle  husky:  "You  see 
I  make  the  traditional  Camille  entrance  —  with 
the  cough.  How  good  of  you  to  come,  Mr.  Hil- 
garde. " 

Everett  was  acutely  conscious  that  while  ad- 
dressing him  she  was  not  looking  at  him  at  all, 
and,  as  he  assured  her  of  his  pleasure  in  coming, 
he  was  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  collect  him- 
self. He  had  not  reckoned  upon  the  ravages  of  a 
long  illness.  The  long,  loose  folds  of  her  white 
gown  had  been  especially  designed  to  conceal  the 
sharp  outlines  of  her  emaciated  body,  but  the 
stamp  of  her  disease  was  there ;  simple  and  ugly 
and  obtrusive,  a  pitiless  fact  that  could  not  be 
disguised  or  evaded.  The  splendid  shoulders  were 
stooped,  there  was  a  swaying  unevenness  in  her 
gait,  her  arms  seemed  disproportionately  long, 
and  her  hands  were  transparently  white,  and  cold 
to  the  touch.  The  changes  in  her  face  were  less  ob- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  127 

vious;  the  proud  carriage  of  the  head,  the  warm, 
clear  ey^c  even  the  delicate  flush  of  colour  in  her 
checks,  all  defiantly  remained,  though  they  were 
a1]  in  a  lower  key  —  older,  sadder,  softer. 

She  sat  down  upon  the  divan  and  began  nerv- 
ously to  arrange  the  pillows.  "I  know  I'm  not  an 
inspiring  object  to  look  upon,  but  you  must  be 
quite  frank  and  sensible  about  that  and  get  used 
to  it  at  once,  for  we've  no  time  to  lose.  And  if 
I'm  a  trifle  irritable  you  won't  mind  ?  —  for  I'm 
more  than  usually  nervous." 

"  Don't  bother  with  me  this  morning,  if  you  are 
tired,"  urged  Everett.  "I  can  come  quite  as  well 
to-morrow." 

"Gracious,  no!"  she  protested,  with  a  flash  of 
that  quick,  keen  humour  that  he  remembered  as 
a  part  of  her.  "  It's  solitude  that  I'm  tired  to  death 
of  —  solitude  and  the  wrong  kind  of  people.  You 
see,  the  minister,  not  content  with  reading  the 
prayers  for  the  sick,  called  on  me  this  morning. 
He  happened  to  be  riding  by  on  his  bicycle  and 
felt  it  his  duty  to  stop.  Of  course,  he  disapproves 
of  my  profession,  and  I  think  he  takes  it  for 
granted  that  I  have  a  dark  past.  The  funniest  fea- 
ture of  his  conversation  is  that  he  is  always  ex- 
cusing my  own  vocation  to  me  —  condoning  it, 


128  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

you  know  —  and  trying  to  patch  up  my  peace 
with  my  conscience  by  suggesting  possible  noble 
uses  for  what  he  kindly  calls  my  talent. " 

Everett  laughed.  "Oh!  I'm  afraid  I'm  not  the 
person  to  call  after  such  a  serious  gentleman  —  I 
can't  sustain  the  situation.  At  my  best  I  don't 
reach  higher  than  low  comedy.  Have  you  decided 
to  which  one  of  the  noble  uses  you  will  devote 
yourself?" 

Katharine  lifted  her  hands  in  a  gesture  of  re- 
nunciation and  exclaimed :  "  I'm  not  equal  to  any 
of  them,  not  even  the  least  noble.  I  didn't  study 
that  method." 

She  laughed  and  went  on  nervously:  "The 
parson's  not  so  bad.  His  English  never  offends 
me,  and  he  has  read  Gibbon's  'Decline  and  Fall,' 
all  five  volumes,  and  that's  something.  Then,  he 
has  been  to  New  York,  and  that's  a  great  deal. 
But  how  we  are  losing  time!  Do  tell  me  about 
New  York;  Charley  says  you're  just  on  from 
there.  How  does  it  look  and  taste  and  smell  just 
now  ?  I  think  a  whiff  of  the  Jersey  ferry  would  be 
as  flagons  of  cod-liver  oil  to  me.  Who  conspicu- 
ously walks  the  Rialto  now,  and  what  does  he  or 
she  wear  ?  Are  the  trees  still  green  in  Madison 
Square,  or  have  they  grown  brown  and  dusty  ? 


"A  DEATH  IN   THE  DESERT"  129 

Does  the  chaste  Diana  on  the  Garden  Theatre 
still  keep  her  vestal  vows  through  all  the  ex- 
asperating changes  of  weather  ?  Who  has  your 
brother's  old  studio  now,  and  what  misguided 
aspirants  practise  their  scales  in  the  rookeries 
about  Carnegie  Hall  ?  What  do  people  go  to  see 
at  the  theatres,  and  what  do  they  eat  and  drink 
there  in  the  world  nowadays  ?  You  see,  I'm  home- 
sick for  it  all,  from  the  Battery  to  Riverside.  Oh, 
let  me  die  in  Harlem!"  she  was  interrupted  by 
a  violent  attack  of  coughing,  and  Everett,  em- 
barrassed by  her  discomfort,  plunged  into  gossip 
about  the  professional  people  he  had  met  in  town 
during  the  summer,  and  the  musical  outlook  for 
the  winter.  He  was  diagraming  with  his  pencil, 
on  the  back  of  an  old  envelope  he  found  in  his 
pocket,  some  new  mechanical  device  to  be  used 
at  the  Metropolitan  in  the  production  of  the 
Rheingold,  when  he  became  conscious  that  she 
was  looking  at  him  intently,  and  that  he  was  talk- 
ing to  the  four  walls. 

Katharine  was  lying  back  among  the  pillows, 
watching  him  through  half-closed  eyes,  as  a 
painter  looks  at  a  picture.  He  finished  his  ex- 
planation vaguely  enough  and  put  the  envelope 
back  in  his  pocket.  As  he  did  so,  she  said,  quietly: 


130  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"How  wonderfully  like  Adriance  you  are!"  and 
he  felt  as  though  a  crisis  of  some  sort  had  been 
met  and  tided  over. 

He  laughed,  looking  up  at  her  with  a  touch  of 
pride  in  his  eyes  that  made  them  seem  quite  boy- 
ish. "Yes,  isn't  it  absurd?  It's  almost  as  awk- 
ward as  looking  like  Napoleon  —  But,  after  all, 
there  are  some  advantages.  It  has  made  some 
of  his  friends  like  me,  and  I  hope  it  will  make 
you. " 

Katharine  smiled  and  gave  him  a  quick,  mean- 
ing glance  from  under  her  lashes.  "Oh,  it  did 
that  long  ago.  What  a  haughty,  reserved  youth 
you  were  then,  and  how  you  used  to  stare  at 
people,  and  then  blush  and  look  cross  if  they 
paid  you  back  in  your  own  coin.  Do  you  remem- 
ber that  night  when  you  took  me  home  from  a  re- 
hearsal, and  scarcely  spoke  a  word  to  me  ?" 

"It  was  the  silence  of  admiration,"  protested 
Everett,  "very  crude  and  boyish,  but  very  sincere 
and  not  a  little  painful.  Perhaps  you  suspected 
something  of  the  sort  ?  I  remember  you  saw  fit 
to  be  very  grown  up  and  worldly. " 

"I  believe  I  suspected  a  pose;  the  one  that  col- 
lege boys  usually  affect  with  singers  —  '  an  earth- 
en vessel  in  love  with  a  star,'  you  know.  But  it 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  131 

rather  surprised  me  in  you,  for  you  must  have 
seen  a  good  deal  of  your  brother's  pupils.  Or  had 
you  an  omnivorous  capacity,  and  elasticity  that 
always  met  the  occasion?" 

"Don't  ask  a  man  to  confess  the  follies  of  his 
youth, "  said  Everett,  smiling  a  little  sadly;  "I  am 
sensitive  about  some  of  them  even  now.  But  I 
was  not  so  sophisticated  as  you  imagined.  I  saw 
my  brother's  pupils  come  and  go,  but  that  was 
about  all.  Sometimes  I  was  called  on  to  play  ac- 
companiments, or  to  fill  out  a  vacancy  at  a  re- 
hearsal, or  to  order  a  carriage  for  an  infuriated 
soprano  who  had  thrown  up  her  part.  But  they 
never  spent  any  time  on  me,  unless  it  was  to 
notice  the  resemblance  you  speak  of. " 

"Yes,"  observed  Katharine,  thoughtfully,  "I 
noticed  it  then,  too;  but  it  has  grown  as  you  have 
grown  older.  That  is  rather  strange,  when  you 
have  lived  such  different  lives.  It's  not  merely  an 
ordinary  family  likeness  of  feature,  you  know, 
but  a  sort  of  interchangeable  individuality;  the 
suggestion  of  the  other  man's  personality  in  your 
face  —  like  an  air  transposed  to  another  key.  But 
I'm  not  attempting  to  define  it;  it's  beyond  me; 
something  altogether  unusual  and  a  trifle  —  well, 
uncanny,"  she  finished,  laughing. 


132  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"I  remember,"  Everett  said,  seriously,  twirl- 
ing the  pencil  between  his  fingers  and  looking,  as 
he  sat  with  his  head  thrown  back,  out  under  the 
red  window-blind  which  was  raised  just  a  little, 
and  as  it  swung  back  and  forth  in  the  wind  re- 
vealed the  glaring  panorama  of  the  desert  —  a 
blinding  stretch  of  yellow,  flat  as  the  sea  in  dead 
calm,  splotched  here  and  there  with  deep  purple 
shadows ;  and,  beyond,  the  ragged  blue  outline  of 
the  mountains  and  the  peaks  of  snow,  white  as 
the  white  clouds  —  "I  remember,  when  I  was  a 
little  fellow  I  used  to  be  very  sensitive  about  it.  I 
don't  think  it  exactly  displeased  me,  or  that  I 
would  have  had  it  otherwise  if  I  could,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  like  a  birthmark,  or  something  not 
to  be  lightly  spo'ken  of.  People  were  naturally  al- 
ways fonder  of  Ad  than  of  me,  and  I  used  to  feel 
the  chill  of  reflected  light  pretty  often.  It  came 
into  even  my  relations  with  my  mother.  Ad  went 
abroad  to  study  when  he  was  absurdly  young, 
you  know,  and  mother  was  all  broken  up  over 
it.  She  did  her  whole  duty  by  each  of  us,  but 
it  was  sort  of  generally  understood  among  us 
that  she'd  have  made  burnt-offerings  of  us  all 
for  Ad  any  day.  I  was  a  little  fellow  then,  and 
when  she  sat  alone  on  the  porch  in  the  sum- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  133 

mer  dusk,  she  used  sometimes  to  call  me  to 
her  and  turn  my  face  up  in  the  light  that 
streamed  out  through  the  shutters  and  kiss  me, 
and  then  I  always  knew  she  was  thinking  of 
Adriance. " 

"Poor  little  chap,"  said  Katharine,  and  her 
tone  was  a  trifle  huskier  than  usual.  "How  fond 
people  have  always  been  of  Adriance!  Now  tell 
me  the  latest  news  of  him.  I  haven't  heard,  except 
through  the  press,  for  a  year  or  more.  He  was  in 
Algiers  then,  in  the  valley  of  the  Chelif,  riding 
horseback  night  and  day  in  an  Arabian  cos- 
tume, and  in  his  usual  enthusiastic  fashion  he 
had  quite  made  up  his  mind  to  adopt  the  Ma- 
hometan faith  and  become  as  nearly  an  Arab  as 
possible.  How  many  countries  and  faiths  has  he 
adopted,  I  wonder?  Probably  he  was  playing 
Arab  to  himself  all  the  time.  I  remember  he  was  a 
sixteenth-century  duke  in  Florence  once  for 
weeks  together." 

"Oh,  that's  Adriance,"  chuckled  Everett.  "He 
is  himself  barely  long  enough  to  write  checks  and 
be  measured  for  his  clothes.  I  didn't  hear  from 
him  while  he  was  an  Arab;  I  missed  that. " 

"He  was  writing  an  Algerian  suite  for  the 
piano  then;  it  must  be  in  the  publisher's  hands  by 


134  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

this  time.  I  have  been  too  ill  to  answer  his  letter, 
and  have  lost  touch  with  him. " 

Everett  drew  a  letter  from  his  pocket.  "This 
came  about  a  month  ago.  It's  chiefly  about  his 
new  opera  which  is  to  be  brought  out  in  London 
next  winter.  Read  it  at  your  leisure. " 

"  I  think  I  shall  keep  it  as  a  hostage,  so  that  I 
may  be  sure  you  will  come  again.  Now  I  want  you 
to  play  for  me.  Whatever  you  like;  but  if  there  is 
anything  new  in  the  world,  in  mercy  let  me  hear 
it.  For  nine  months  I  have  heard  nothing  but 
'The  Baggage  Coach  Ahead'  and  'She  is  My 
Baby's  Mother.'" 

He  sat  down  at  the  piano,  and  Katharine  sat 
near  him,  absorbed  in  his  remarkable  physical 
likeness  to  his  brother,  and  trying  to  discover  in 
just  what  it  consisted.  She  told  herself  that  it  was 
very  much  as  though  a  sculptor's  finished  work 
had  been  rudely  copied  in  wood.  He  was  of  a 
larger  build  than  Adriance,  and  his  shoulders 
were  broad  and  heavy,  while  those  of  his  brother 
were  slender  and  rather  girlish.  His  face  was  of 
the  same  oval  mould,  but  it  was  grey,  and  dark- 
ened about  the  mouth  by  continual  shaving.  His 
eyes  were  of  the  same  inconstant  April  colour,  but 
they  were  reflective  and  rather  dull;  while  Adri- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  135 

ance's  were  always  points  of  high  light,  and  al- 
ways meaning  another  thing  than  the  thing  they 
meant  yesterday.  But  it  was  hard  to  see  why  this 
earnest  man  should  so  continually  suggest  that 
lyric,  youthful  face  that  was  as  gay  as  his  was 
grave.  For  Adriance,  though  he  was  ten  years  the 
elder,  and  though  his  hair  was  streaked  with 
silver,  had  the  face  of  a  boy  of  twenty,  so  mobile 
that  it  told  his  thoughts  before  he  could  put  them 
into  words.  A  contralto,  famous  for  the  extrav- 
agance of  her  vocal  methods  and  of  her  affections 
had  once  said  of  him  that  the  shepherd-boys 
who  sang  in  the  Vale  of  Tempe  must  certainly 
have  looked  like  young  Hilgarde;  and  the  com- 
parison had  been  appropriated  by  a  hundred 
shyer  women  who  preferred  to  quote. 

As  Everett  sat  smoking  on  the  veranda  of  the 
Inter-Ocean  House  that  night,  he  was  a  victim 
to  random  recollections.  His  infatuation  for 
Katharine  Gaylord,  visionary  as  it  was,  had  been 
the  most  serious  of  his  boyish  love-affairs,  and 
had  long  disturbed  his  bachelor  dreams.  He  was 
painfully  timid  in  everything  relating  to  the 
emotions,  and  his  hurt  had  withdrawn  him  from 
the  society  of  women.  The  fact  that  it  was  all 


136  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

so  done  and  dead  and  far  behind  him,  and  that 
the  woman  had  lived  her  life  out  since  then,  gave 
him  an  oppressive  sense  of  age  and  loss.  He  be- 
thought himself  of  something  he  had  read  about 
"  sitting  by  the  hearth  and  remembering  the  faces 
of  women  without  desire/'  and  felt  himself  an 
octogenarian. 

He  remembered  how  bitter  and  morose  he  had 
grown  during  his  stay  at  his  brother's  studio 
when  Katharine  Gaylord  was  working  there,  and 
how  he  had  wounded  Adriance  on  the  night  of 
his  last  concert  in  New  York.  He  had  sat  there 
in  the  box  while  his  brother  and  Katharine  were 
called  back  again  and  again  after  the  last  number, 
watching  the  roses  go  up  over  the  footlights  until 
they  were  stacked  half  as  high  as  the  piano, 
brooding,  in  his  sullen  boy's  heart,  upon  the  pride 
those  two  felt  in  each  other's  work  —  spurring 
each  other  to  their  best  and  beautifully  contend- 
ing in  song.  The  footlights  had  seemed  a  hard, 
glittering  line  drawn  sharply  between  their  life 
and  his;  a  circle  of  flame  set  about  those  splendid 
children  of  genius.  He  walked  back  to  his  hotel 
alone,  and  sat  in  his  window  staring  out  on  Madi- 
son Square  until  long  after  midnight,  resolving  to 
beat  no  more  at  doors  that  he  could  never  enter, 


"A  DEATH  IN   THE  DESERT"  137 

and  realizing  more  keenly  than  ever  before  how 
far  this  glorious  world  of  beautiful  creations  lay 
from  the  paths  of  men  like  himself.  He  told  him- 
self that  he  had  in  common  with  this  woman  only 
the  baser  uses  of  life. 

Everett's  week  in  Cheyenne  stretched  to  three, 
and  he  saw  no  prospect  of  release  except  through 
the  thing  he  dreaded.  The  bright,  windy  days  of 
the  Wyoming  autumn  passed  swiftly.  Letters  and 
telegrams  came  urging  him  to  hasten  his  trip  to 
the  coast,  but  he  resolutely  postponed  his  busi- 
ness engagements.  The  mornings  he  spent  on  one 
of  Charley  Gaylord's  ponies,  or  fishing  in  the 
mountains,  and  in  the  evenings  he  sat  in  his  room 
writing  letters  or  reading.  In  the  afternoon  he 
was  usually  at  his  post  of  duty.  Destiny,  he  re- 
flected, seems  to  have  very  positive  notions  about 
the  sort  of  parts  we  are  fitted  to  play.  The  scene 
changes  and  the  compensation  varies,  but  in  the 
end  we  usually  find  that  we  have  played  the  same 
class  of  business  from  first  to  last.  Everett  had 
been  a  stop-gap  all  his  life.  He  remembered  go- 
ing through  a  looking-glass  labyrinth  when  he 
was  a  boy,  and  trying  gallery  after  gallery,  only 
at  every  turn  to  bump  his  nose  against  his  own 


138  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

face  —  which,  indeed,  was  not  his  own,  but  his 
brother's.  No  matter  what  his  mission,  east  or 
west,  by  land  or  sea,  he  was  sure  to  find  himself 
employed  in  his  brother's  business,  one  of  the 
tributary  lives  which  helped  to  swell  the  shining 
current  of  Adriance  Hilgarde's.  It  was  not  the 
first  time  that  his  duty  had  been  to  comfort,  as 
best  he  could,  one  of  the  broken  things  his  broth- 
er's imperious  speed  had  cast  aside  and  forgotten. 
He  made  no  attempt  to  analyse  the  situation  or 
to  state  it  in  exact  terms;  but  he  felt  Katharine 
Gaylord's  need  for  him,  and  he  accepted  it  as  a 
commission  from  his  brother  to  help  this  woman 
to  die.  Day  by  day  he  felt  her  demands  on  him 
grow  more  imperious,  her  need  for  him  grow 
more  acute  and  positive;  and  day  by  day  he  felt 
that  in  his  peculiar  relation  to  her,  his  own  indi- 
viduality played  a  smaller  and  smaller  part.  His 
power  to  minister  to  her  comfort,  he  saw,  lay  solely 
in  his  link  with  his  brother's  life.  He  understood 
all  that  his  physical  resemblance  meant  to  her. 
He  knew  that  she  sat  by  him  always  watching  for 
some  common  trick  of  gesture,  some  familiar  play 
of  expression,  some  illusion  of  light  and  shadow, 
in  which  he  should  seem  wholly  Adriance.  He 
knew  that  she  lived  upon  this  and  that  her  dis- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  139 

ease  fed  upon  it ;  that  it  sent  shudders  of  remem- 
brance through  her  and  that  in  the  exhaustion 
which  followed  this  turmoil  of  her  dying  senses, 
she  slept  deep  and  sweet,  and  dreamed  of  youth 
and  art  and  days  in  a  certain  old  Florentine  gar- 
den, and  not  of  bitterness  and  death. 

The  question  which  most  perplexed  him  was, 
"  How  much  shall  I  know  ?  How  much  does  she 
wish  me  to  know?"  A  few  days  after  his  first 
meeting  with  Katharine  Gaylord,  he  had  cabled 
his  brother  to  write  her.  He  had  merely  said  that 
she  was  mortally  ill ;  he  could  depend  on  Adriance 
to  say  the  right  thing  —  that  was  a  part  of  his  gift. 
Adriance  always  said  not  only  the  right  thing,  but 
the  opportune,  graceful,  exquisite  thing.  His 
phrases  took  the  colour  of  the  moment  and  the 
then  present  condition,  so  that  they  never  savour- 
ed of  perfunctory  compliment  or  frequent  us- 
age. He  always  caught  the  lyric  essence  of  the 
moment,  the  poetic  suggestion  of  every  situation. 
Moreover,  he  usually  did  the  right  thing,  the  op- 
portune, graceful,  exquisite  thing  —  except,  when 
he  did  very  cruel  things  —  bent  upon  making 
people  happy  when  their  existence  touched  his, 
just  as  he  insisted  that  his  material  environment 
should  be  beautiful;  lavishing  upon  those  near 


140  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

him  all  the  warmth  and  radiance  of  his  rich  na- 
ture, all  the  homage  of  the  poet  and  troubadour, 
and,  when  they  were  no  longer  near,  forgetting  — 
for  that  also  was  a  part  of  Adriance's  gift. 

Three  weeks  after  Everett  had  sent  his  cable, 
when  he  made  his  daily  call  at  the  gayly  painted 
ranch-house,  he  found  Katharine  laughing  like  a 
school-girl.  "Have  you  ever  thought,"  she  said, 
as  he  entered  the  music-room,  "how  much  these 
seances  of  ours  are  like  Heine's  'Florentine 
Nights,'  except  that  I  don't  give  you  an  oppor- 
tunity to  monopolize  the  conversation  as  Heine 
did  ?"  She  held  his  hand  longer  than  usual  as  she 
greeted  him,  and  looked  searchingly  up  into  his 
face.  "You  are  the  kindest  man  living,  the 
kindest,"  she  added,  softly. 

Everett's  grey  face  coloured  faintly  as  he  drew 
his  hand  away,  for  he  felt  that  this  time  she  was 
looking  at  him,  and  not  at  a  whimsical  caricature 
of  his  brother.  "Why,  what  have  I  done  now?" 
he  asked,  lamely.  "I  can't  remember  having  sent 
you  any  stale  candy  or  champagne  since  yester- 
day." 

She  drew  a  letter  with  a  foreign  postmark  from 
between  the  leaves  of  a  book  and  held  it  out, 
smiling.   "You  got  him  to  write  it.  Don't  say 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  141 

you  didn't,  for  it  came  direct,  you  see,  and  the  last 
address  I  gave  him  was  a  place  in  Florida.  This 
deed  shall  be  remembered  of  you  when  I  am  with 
the  just  in  Paradise.  But  one  thing  you  did  not 
ask  him  to  do,  for  you  didn't  know  about  it.  He 
has  sent  me  his  latest  work,  the  new  sonata,  the 
most  ambitious  thing  he  has  ever  done,  and  you 
are  to  play  it  for  me  directly,  though  it  looks  hor- 
ribly intricate.  But  first  for  the  letter;  I  think  you 
would  better  read  it  aloud  to  me." 

Everett  sat  down  in  a  low  chair  facing  the  win- 
dow-seat in  which  she  reclined  with  a  barricade  of 
pillows  behind  her.  He  opened  the  letter,  his  lash- 
es half -veiling  his  kind  eyes,  and  saw  to  his  satis- 
faction that  it  was  a  long  one;  wonderfully  tact- 
ful and  tender,  even  for  Adriance,  who  was  tender 
with  his  valet  and  his  stable-boy,  with  his  old 
gondolier  and  the  beggar-women  who  prayed  to 
the  saints  for  him. 

The  letter  was  from  Granada,  written  in  the 
Alhambra,  as  he  sat  by  the  fountain  of  the 
Patio  di  Lindaraxa.  The  air  was  heavy  with  the 
warm  fragrance  of  the  South  and  full  of  the 
sound  of  splashing,  running  water,  as  it  had  been 
in  a  certain  old  garden  in  Florence,  long  ago.  The 
sky  was  one  great  turquoise,  heated  until  it  glow- 


142  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

ed.  The  wonderful  Moorish  arches  threw  grace- 
ful blue  shadows  all  about  him.  He  had  sketched 
an  outline  of  them  on  the  margin  of  his  note- 
paper.  The  subtleties  of  Arabic  decoration  had 
cast  an  unholy  spell  over  him,  and  the  brutal  ex- 
aggerations of  Gothic  art  were  a  bad  dream, 
easily  forgotten.  The  Alhambra  itself  had,  from 
the  first,  seemed  perfectly  familiar  to  him,  and  he 
knew  that  he  must  have  trod  that  court,  sleek  and 
brown  and  obsequious,  centuries  before  Ferdi- 
nand rode  into  Andalusia.  The  letter  was  full  of 
confidences  about  his  work,  and  delicate  allusions 
to  their  old  happy  days  of  study  and  comrade- 
ship, and  of  her  own  work,  still  so  warmly  re- 
membered and  appreciatively  discussed  every- 
where he  went. 

As  Everett  folded  the  letter  he  felt  that  Adri- 
ance  had  divined  the  thing  needed  and  had  risen 
to  it  in  his  own  wonderful  way.  The  letter  was 
consistently  egotistical,  and  seemed  to  him  even  a 
trifle  patronizing,  yet  it  was  just  what  she  had 
wanted.  A  strong  realization  of  his  brother's 
charm  and  intensity  and  power  came  over  him; 
he  felt  the  breath  of  that  whirlwind  of  flame  in 
which  Adriance  passed,  consuming  all  in  his 
path,  and  himself  even  more  resolutely  than  he 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  143 

consumed  others.  Then  he  looked  down  at  this 
white,  burnt-out  brand  that  lay  before  him."  Like 
him,  isn't  it  ?"  she  said,  quietly. 

"I  think  I  can  scarcely  answer  his  letter,  but 
when  you  see  him  next  you  can  do  that  for  me.  I 
want  you  to  tell  him  many  things  for  me,  yet  they 
can  all  be  summed  up  in  this :  I  want  him  to  grow 
wholly  into  his  best  and  greatest  self,  even  at  the 
cost  of  the  dear  boyishness  that  is  half  his  charm 
to  you  and  me.  Do  you  understand  me  ?" 

"I  know  perfectly  well  what  you  mean,"  an- 
swered Everett,  thoughtfully.  "I  have  often  felt 
so  about  him  myself.  And  yet  it's  difficult  to 
prescribe  for  those  fellows;  so  little  makes,  so 
little  mars." 

Katharine  raised  herself  upon  her  elbow,  and 
her  face  flushed  with  feverish  earnestness.  "Ah, 
but  it  is  the  waste  of  himself  that  I  mean;  his 
lashing  himself  out  on  stupid  and  uncompre- 
hending people  until  they  take  him  at  their  own 
estimate.  He  can  kindle  marble,  strike  fire  from 
putty,  but  is  it  worth  what  it  costs  him  ?" 

"Come,  come,"  expostulated  Everett,  alarmed 
at  her  excitement.  "Where  is  the  new  sonata? 
Let  him  speak  for  himself." 

He  sat  down  at  the  piano  and  began  playing 


144  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

the  first  movement  which  was  indeed  the  voice  of 
Adriance,  his  proper  speech.  The  sonata  was 
the  most  ambitious  work  he  had  done  up  to 
that  time,  and  marked  the  transition  from  his 
purely  lyric  vein  to  a  deeper  and  nobler  style. 
Everett  played  intelligently  and  with  that  sym- 
pathetic comprehension  which  seems  peculiar  to 
a  certain  lovable  class  of  men  who  never  accom- 
plish anything  in  particular.  When  he  had  finished 
he  turned  to  Katharine. 

"How  he  has  grown!"  she  cried.  "What 
the  three  last  years  have  done  for  him!  He 
used  to  write  only  the  tragedies  of  passion ;  but 
this  is  the  tragedy  of  the  soul,  the  shadow  co- 
existent with  the  soul.  This  is  the  tragedy  of 
effort  and  failure,  the  thing  Keats  called  hell. 
This  is  my  tragedy,  as  I  lie  here  spent  by  the 
race-course,  listening  to  the  feet  of  the  runners 
as  they  pass  me  —  ah,  God !  the  swift  feet  of  the 
runners!" 

She  turned  her  face  away  and  covered  it  with 
her  straining  hands.  Everett  crossed  over  to  her 
quickly  and  knelt  beside  her.  In  all  the  days  he 
had  known  her  she  had  never  before,  beyond  an 
occasional  ironical  jest,  given  voice  to  the  bitter- 
ness of  her  own  defeat.  Her  courage  had  become 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  145 

a  point  of  pride  with  him,  and  to  see  it  going  sick- 
ened him. 

"Don't  do  it,"  he  gasped.  "I  can't  stand  it,  I 
really  can't,  I  feel  it  too  much.  We  mustn't 
speak  of  that;  it's  too  tragic  and  too  vast. " 

When  she  turned  her  face  back  to  him  there 
was  a  ghost  of  the  old,  brave,  cynical  smile  on  it, 
more  bitter  than  the  tears  she  could  not  shed. 
"No,  I  won't  be  so  ungenerous;  I  will  save  that 
for  the  watches  of  the  night  when  I  have  no  bet- 
ter company.  Now  you  may  mix  me  another  drink 
of  some  sort.  Formerly,  when  it  was  not  if  I 
should  ever  sing  Brunhilda,  but  quite  simply 
when  I  should  sing  Brunhilda,  I  was  always  starv- 
ing myself,  and  thinking  what  I  might  drink  and 
what  I  might  not.  But  broken  music-boxes  may 
drink  whatsoever  they  list,  and  no  one  cares 
whether  they  lose  their  figure.  Run  over  that 
theme  at  the  beginning  again.  That,  at  least,  is 
not  new.  It  was  running  in  his  head  when  we  were 
in  Venice  years  ago,  and  he  used  to  drum  it  on 
his  glass  at  the  dinner-table.  He  had  just  be- 
gun to  work  it  out  when  the  late  autumn  came 
on,  and  the  paleness  of  the  Adriatic  oppressed 
him,  and  he  decided  to  go  to  Florence  for  the 
winter,  and  lost  touch  with  the  theme  during  his 


146  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

illness.  Do  you  remember  those  frightful  days  ? 
All  the  people  who  have  loved  him  are  not  strong 
enough  to  save  him  from  himself!  When  I  got 
word  from  Florence  that  he  had  been  ill,  I  was  in 
Nice  filling  a  concert  engagement.  His  wife  was 
hurrying  to  him  from  Paris,  but  I  reached  him 
first.  I  arrived  at  dusk,  in  a  terrific  storm.  They 
had  taken  an  old  palace  there  for  the  winter,  and 
I  found  him  in  the  library  —  a  long,  dark  room 
full  of  old  Latin  books  and  heavy  furniture  and 
bronzes.  He  was  sitting  by  a  wood  fire  at  one  end 
of  the  room,  looking,  oh,  so  worn  and  pale !  —  as 
he  always  does  when  he  is  ill,  you  know.  Ah,  it  is 
so  good  that  you  do  know !  Even  his  red  smoking- 
jacket  lent  no  colour  to  his  face.  His  first  words 
were  not  to  tell  me  how  ill  he  had  been,  but  that 
that  morning  he  had  been  well  enough  to  put  the 
last  strokes  to  the  score  of  his  '  Souvenirs  d'  Au- 
tomne,'  and  he  was,  as  I  most  like  to  remember 
him ;  so  calm  and  happy  and  tired ;  not  gay,  as  he 
usually  is,  but  just  contented  and  tired  with  that 
heavenly  tiredness  that  comes  after  a  good  work 
done  at  last.  Outside,  the  rain  poured  down  in 
torrents,  and  the  wind  moaned  for  the  pain  of  all 
the  world  and  sobbed  in  the  branches  of  the  shiv- 
ering olives  and  about  the  walls  of  that  deso- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  147 

lated  old  palace.  How  that  night  comes  back  to 
me!  There  were  no  lights  in  the  room,  only  the 
wood  fire  which  glowed  upon  the  hard  features 
of  the  bronze  Dante  like  the  reflection  of  purga- 
torial flames,  and  threw  long  black  shadows  about 
us;  beyond  us  it  scarcely  penetrated  the  gloom  at 
all.  Adriance  sat  staring  at  the  fire  with  the  weari- 
ness of  all  his  life  in  his  eyes,  and  of  all  the  other 
lives  that  must  aspire  and  suffer  to  make  up  one 
such  life  as  his.  Somehow  the  wind  with  all  its 
world-pain  had  got  into  the  room,  and  the  cold 
rain  was  in  our  eyes,  and  the  wave  came  up  in 
both  of  us  at  once  —  that  awful  vague,  universal 
pain,  that  cold  fear  of  life  and  death  and  God  and 
hope  —  and  we  were  like  two  clinging  together  on 
a  spar  in  mid-ocean  after  the  shipwreck  of  every- 
thing. Then  we  heard  the  front  door  open  with  a 
great  gust  of  wind  that  shook  even  the  walls,  and 
the  servants  came  running  with  lights,  announc- 
ing that  Madame  had  returned,  '  and  in  the  book 
we  read  no  Trior e  that  night.' " 

She  gave  the  old  line  with  a  certain  bitter 
humour,  and  with  the  hard,  bright  smile  in  which 
of  old  she  had  wrapped  her  weakness  as  in  a  glit- 
tering garment.  That  ironical  smile,  worn  like  a 
mask  through   so   many  years,    had  gradually 


148  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

changed  even  the  lines  of  her  face  completely, 
and  when  she  looked  in  the  mirror  she  saw  not 
herself,  but  the  scathing  critic,  the  amused  ob- 
server and  satirist  of  herself.  Everett  dropped  his 
head  upon  his  hand  and  sat  looking  at  the  rug. 
"How  much  you  have  cared!"  he  said. 

"Ah,  yes,  I  cared,"  she  replied,  closing  her 
eyes  with  a  long-drawn  sigh  of  relief;  and  lying 
perfectly  still,  she  went  on:  "You  can't  imagine 
what  a  comfort  it  is  to  have  you  know  how  I  cared, 
what  a  relief  it  is  to  be  able  to  tell  it  to  some  one.  I 
used  to  want  to  shriek  it  out  to  the  world  in  the 
long  nights  when  I  could  not  sleep.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  I  could  not  die  with  it.  It  demanded  some 
sort  of  expression.  And  now  that  you  know,  you 
would  scarcely  believe  how  much  less  sharp  the 
anguish  of  it  is. " 

Everett  continued  to  look  helplessly  at  the  floor. 
"I  was  not  sure  how  much  you  wanted  me  to 
know,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  I  intended  you  should  know  from  the 
first  time  I  looked  into  your  face,  when  you  came 
that  day  with  Charley.  I  flatter  myself  that  I  have 
been  able  to  conceal  it  when  I  chose,  though  I 
suppose  women  always  think  that.  The  more  ob- 
serving ones  may  have  seen,  but  discerning  peo- 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  149 

pie  are  usually  discreet  and  often  kind,  for  we 
usually  bleed  a  little  before  we  begin  to  discern. 
But  I  wanted  you  to  know;  you  are  so  like  him 
that  it  is  almost  like  telling  him  himself.  At  least, 
I  feel  now  that  he  will  know  some  day,  and  then  I 
will  be  quite  sacred  from  his  compassion,  for  we 
none  of  us  dare  pity  the  dead.  Since  it  was  what 
my  life  has  chiefly  meant,  I  should  like  him  to 
know.  On  the  whole,  I  am  not  ashamed  of  it.  I 
have  fought  a  good  fight. " 

"And  has  he  never  known  at  all?"  asked 
Everett,  in  a  thick  voice. 

"  Oh !  never  at  all  in  the  way  that  you  mean.  Of 
course,  he  is  accustomed  to  looking  into  the  eyes 
of  women  and  finding  love  there;  when  he  doesn't 
find  it  there  he  thinks  he  must  have  been  guilty  of 
some  discourtesy  and  is  miserable  about  it.  He 
has  a  genuine  fondness  for  every  one  who  is  not 
stupid  or  gloomy,  or  old  or  preternaturally  ugly. 
Granted  youth  and  cheerfulness,  and  a  moderate 
amount  of  wit  and  some  tact,  and  Adriance  will 
always  be  glad  to  see  you  coming  round  the  cor- 
ner. I  shared  with  the  rest ;  shared  the  smiles  and 
the  gallantries  and  the  droll  little  sermons.  It  was 
quite  like  a  Sunday-school  picnic;  we  wore  our 
best  clothes  and  a  smile  and  took  our  turns.  It 


150  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

was  his  kindness  that  was  hardest.  I  have  pretty 
well  used  my  life  up  at  standing  punishment." 

"Don't;  you'll  make  me  hate  him,"  groaned 
Everett. 

Katharine  laughed  and  began  to  play  nerv- 
ously with  her  fan.  "  It  wasn't  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree his  fault;  that  is  the  most  grotesque  part  of 
it.  Why,  it  had  really  begun  before  I  ever  met 
him.  I  fought  my  way  to  him,  and  I  drank  my 
doom  greedily  enough. " 

Everett  rose  and  stood  hesitating.  "I  think  I 
must  go.  You  ought  to  be  quiet,  and  I  don't  think 
I  can  hear  any  more  just  now. " 

She  put  out  her  hand  and  took  his  playfully. 
'You've  put  in  three  weeks  at  this  sort  of  thing, 
haven't  you  ?  Well,  it  may  never  be  to  your  glory 
in  this  world,  perhaps,  but  it's  been  the  mercy  of 
heaven  to  me,  and  it  ought  to  square  accounts 
for  a  much  worse  life  than  yours  will  ever  be." 

Everett  knelt  beside  her,  saying,  brokenly: 
"I  stayed  because  I  wanted  to  be  with  you, 
that's  all.  I  have  never  cared  about  other  women 
since  I  met  you  in  New  York  when  I  was  a  lad. 
You  are  a  part  of  my  destiny,  and  I  could  not 
leave  you  if  I  would. " 

She  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  and  shook 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  151 

her  head.  "No,  no;  don't  tell  me  that.  I  have  seen 
enough  of  tragedy,  God  knows:  don't  show  me 
any  more  just  as  the  curtain  is  going  down.  No, 
no,  it  was  only  a  boy's  fancy,  and  your  divine  pity 
and  my  utter  pitiableness  have  recalled  it  for  a 
moment.  One  does  not  love  the  dying,  dear 
friend.  If  some  fancy  of  that  sort  had  been  left 
over  from  boyhood,  this  would  rid  you  of  it,  and 
that  were  well.  Now  go,  and  you  will  come  again 
to-morrow,  as  long  as  there  are  to-morrows,  will 
you  not?"  She  took  his  hand  with  a  smile  that 
lifted  the  mask  from  her  soul,  that  was  both 
courage  and  despair,  and  full  of  infinite  loyalty 
and  tenderness,  as  she  said  softly: 

"  For  ever  and  for  ever,  farewell,  Cassius  ; 
If  ive  do  meet  again,  why,  we  shall  smile  ; 
If  not,  why  then,  this  farting  tvas  well  made." 

The  courage  in  her  eyes  was  like  the  clear 
light  of  a  star  to  him  as  he  went  out. 

On  the  night  of  Adriance  Hilgarde's  opening 
concert  in  Paris,  Everett  sat  by  the  bed  in  the 
ranch-house  in  Wyoming,  watching  over  the  last 
battle  that  we  have  with  the  flesh  before  we  are 
done  with  it  and  free  of  it  forever.  At  times   it 


152  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

seemed  that  the  serene  soul  of  her  must  have  left 
already  and  found  some  refuge  from  the  storm, 
and  only  the  tenacious  animal  life  were  left  to  do 
battle  with  death.  She  laboured  under  a  delusion 
at  once  pitiful  and  merciful,  thinking  that  she  was 
in  the  Pullman  on  her  way  to  New  York,  going 
back  to  her  life  and  her  work.  When  she  aroused 
from  her  stupor,  it  was  only  to  ask  the  porter  to 
waken  her  half  an  hour  out  of  Jersey  City,  or  to 
remonstrate  with  him  about  the  delays  and  the 
roughness  of  the  road.  At  midnight  Everett  and 
the  nurse  were  left  alone  with  her.  Poor  Charley 
Gaylord  had  lain  down  on  a  couch  outside  the 
door.  Everett  sat  looking  at  the  sputtering  night- 
lamp  until  it  made  his  eyes  ache.  His  head 
dropped  forward  on  the  foot  of  the  bed,  and  he 
sank  into  a  heavy,  distressful  slumber.  He  was 
dreaming  of  Adriance's  concert  in  Paris,  and  of 
Adriance,  the  troubadour,  smiling  and  debon- 
nair,  with  his  boyish  face  and  the  touch  of  silver 
grey  in  his  hair.  He  heard  the  applause  and  he 
saw  the  roses  going  up  over  the  footlights  until 
they  were  stacked  half  as  high  as  the  piano,  and 
the  petals  fell  and  scattered,  making  crimson 
splotches  on  the  floor.  Down  this  crimson  path- 
way came  x\driance  with  his  youthful  step,  leading 


"A  DEATH  IN  THE  DESERT"  153 

his  prima  donna  by  the  hand;  a  dark  woman 
this  time,  with  Spanish  eyes. 

The  nurse  touched  him  on  the  shoulder,  he 
started  and  awoke.  She  screened  the  lamp  with 
her  hand.  Everett  saw  that  Katharine  was  awake 
and  conscious,  and  struggling  a  little.  He  lifted 
her  gently  on  his  arm  and  began  to  fan  her.  She 
laid  her  hands  lightly  on  his  hair  and  looked  into 
his  face  with  eyes  that  seemed  never  to  have  wept 
or  doubted.  "Ah,  dear  Adriance,  dear,  dear," 
she  whispered. 

Everett  went  to  call  her  brother,  but  when  they 
came  back  the  madness  of  art  was  over  for 
Katharine. 

Two  days  later  Everett  was  pacing  the  station 
siding,  waiting  for  the  west-bound  train.  Charley 
Gaylord  walked  beside  him,  but  the  two  men  had 
nothing  to  say  to  each  other.  Everett's  bags  were 
piled  on  the  truck,  and  his  step  was  hurried  and 
his  eyes  were  full  of  impatience,  as  he  gazed  again 
and  again  up  the  track,  watching  for  the  train. 
Gaylord's  impatience  was  not  less  than  his  own; 
these  two,  who  had  grown  so  close,  had  now  be- 
come painful  and  impossible  to  each  other,  and 
longed  for  the  wrench  of  farewell. 

As  the  train  pulled  in,  Everett  wrung  Gay- 


154  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

lord's  hand  among  the  crowd  of  alighting  pas- 
sengers. The  people  of  a  German  opera  company, 
en  route  for  the  coast,  rushed  by  them  in  frantic 
haste  to  snatch  their  breakfast  during  the  stop. 
Everett  heard  an  exclamation  in  a  broad  German 
dialect,  and  a  massive  woman  whose  figure  per- 
sistently escaped  from  her  stays  in  the  most  im- 
probable places  rushed  up  to  him,  her  blond  hair 
disordered  by  the  wind,  and  glowing  with  joyful 
surprise  she  caught  his  coat-sleeve  with  her  tight- 
ly gloved  hands. 

" Herr  Gott,  Adriance,  lieber  Freund,"  she 
cried,  emotionally. 

Everett  quickly  withdrew  his  arm,  and  lifted 
his  hat,  blushing.  "Pardon  me,  madame,  but  I 
see  that  you  have  mistaken  me  for  Adriance  Hil- 
garde.  I  am  his  brother,"  he  said,  quietly,  and 
turning  from  the  crestfallen  singer  he  hurried  into 
the  car. 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PHAEDRA 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA 

The  sequence  of  events  was  such  that  Mac- 
Master  did  not  make  his  pilgrimage  to  Hugh 
Treffinger's  studio  until  three  years  after  that 
painter's  death.  MacMaster  was  himself  a 
painter,  an  American  of  the  Gallicized  type, 
who  spent  his  winters  in  New  York,  his  sum- 
mers in  Paris,  and  no  inconsiderable  amount  of 
time  on  the  broad  waters  between.  He  had  often 
contemplated  stopping  in  London  on  one  of  his 
return  trips  in  the  late  autumn,  but  he  had  al- 
ways deferred  leaving  Paris  until  the  prick  of 
necessity  drove  him  home  by  the  quickest  and 
shortest  route. 

Treffinger  was  a  comparatively  young  man  at 
the  time  of  his  death,  and  there  had  seemed  no 
occasion  for  haste  until  haste  was  of  no  avail. 
Then,  possibly,  though  there  had  been  some 
correspondence  between  them,  MacMaster  felt 
certain  qualms  about  meeting  in  the  flesh  a  man 


158  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

who  in  the  flesh  was  so  diversely  reported.  His 
intercourse  with  TrefEnger's  work  had  been  so 
deep  and  satisfying,  so  apart  from  other  appre- 
ciations, that  he  rather  dreaded  a  critical  junc- 
ture of  any  sort.  He  had  always  felt  himself  singu- 
larly inadept  in  personal  relations,  and  in  this 
case  he  had  avoided  the  issue  until  it  was  no 
longer  to  be  feared  or  hoped  for.  There  still  re- 
mained, however,  TrefEnger's  great  unfinished 
picture,  the  Marriage  of  Ph&dra,  which  had 
never  left  his  studio,  and  of  which  MacMaster's 
friends  had  now  and  again  brought  report  that 
it  was  the  painter's  most  characteristic  pro- 
duction. 

The  young  man  arrived  in  London  in  the  eve- 
ning, and  the  next  morning  went  out  to  Kensing- 
ton to  find  TrefEnger's  studio.  It  lay  in  one  of  the 
perplexing  by-streets  off  Holland  Road,  and  the 
number  he  found  on  a  door  set  in  a  high  garden 
wall,  the  top  of  which  was  covered  with  broken 
green  glass  and  over  which  a  budding  lilac-bush 
nodded.  TrefEnger's  plate  was  still  there,  and  a 
card  requesting  visitors  to  ring  for  the  attendant. 
In  response  to  MacMaster's  ring,  the  door  was 
opened  by  a  cleanly  built  little  man,  clad  in  a 
shooting  jacket  and  trousers  that  had  been  made 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PELEDRA  159 

for  an  ampler  figure.  He  had  a  fresh  complexion, 
eyes  of  that  common  uncertain  shade  of  grey,  and 
was  closely  shaven  except  for  the  incipient  mutton- 
chops  on  his  ruddy  cheeks.  He  bore  himself  in  a 
manner  strikingly  capable,  and  there  was  a  sort 
of  trimness  and  alertness  about  him,  despite  the 
too-generous  shoulders  of  his  coat.  In  one  hand 
he  held  a  bulldog  pipe,  and  in  the  other  a  copy 
of  Sporting  Life.  While  MacMaster  was  explain- 
ing the  purpose  of  his  call,  he  noticed  that  the 
man  surveyed  him  critically,  though  not  imper- 
tinently. He  was  admitted  into  a  little  tank  of  a 
lodge  made  of  white-washed  stone,  the  back 
door  and  windows  opening  upon  a  garden.  A 
visitor's  book  and  a  pile  of  catalogues  lay  on 
a  deal  table,  together  with  a  bottle  of  ink  and 
some  rusty  pens.  The  wall  was  ornamented  with 
photographs  and  coloured  prints  of  racing 
favourites. 

"The  studio  is  h'only  open  to  the  public  on 
Saturdays  and  Sundays,"  explained  the  man  — 
he  referred  to  himself  as  "Jymes" —  "but  of 
course  we  make  exceptions  in  the  case  of  pynt- 
ers.  Lydy  Elling  Treffinger  'erself  is  on  the  Conti- 
nent, but  Sir  'Ugh's  orders  was  that  pynters  was  to 
'ave  the  run  of  the  place.' '  He  selected  a  key 


160  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

from  his  pocket  and  threw  open  the  door  into  the 
studio  which,  like  the  lodge,  was  built  against 
the  wall  of  the  garden. 

MacMaster  entered  a  long,  narrow  room, 
built  of  smoothed  planks,  painted  a  light  green; 
cold  and  damp  even  on  that  fine  May  morning. 
The  room  was  utterly  bare  of  furniture  —  unless 
a  step-ladder,  a  model  throne,  and  a  rack  laden 
with  large  leather  portfolios  could  be  accounted 
such  —  and  was  windowless,  without  other 
openings  than  the  door  and  the  skylight,  under 
which  hung  the  unfinished  picture  itself.  Mac- 
Master  had  never  seen  so  many  of  Treffinger's 
paintings  together.  He  knew  the  painter  had 
married  a  woman  with  money  and  had  been  able 
to  keep  such  of  his  pictures  as  he  wished.  These, 
with  all  of  his  replicas  and  studies,  he  had  left 
as  a  sort  of  common  legacy  to  the  younger  men 
of  the  school  he  had  originated. 

As  soon  as  he  was  left  alone,  MacMaster  sat 
down  on  the  edge  of  the  model  throne  before  the 
unfinished  picture.  Here  indeed  was  what  he  had 
come  for;  it  rather  paralysed  his  receptivity  for 
the  moment,  but  gradually  the  thing  found  its 
way  to  him. 

At  one  o'clock  he  was  standing  before  the  col- 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  161 

lection  of  studies  done  for  Boccaccio's  Garden 
when  he  heard  a  voice  at  his  elbow. 

"Pardon,  sir,  but  I  was  just  about  to  lock  up 
and  go  to  lunch.  Are  you  lookin'  for  the  figure 
study  of  Boccaccio  'imself?"  James  queried 
respectfully,  "Lydy  Elling  Treffinger  give  it  to 
Mr.  Rossiter  to  take  down  to  Oxford  for  some 
lectures  he's  been  a-giving  there." 

"Did  he  never  paint  out  his  studies,  then?" 
asked  MacMaster  with  perplexity.  "Here  are 
two  completed  ones  for  this  picture.  Why  did  he 
keep  them?" 

"I  don't  know  as  I  could  say  as  to  that,  sir," 
replied  James,  smiling  indulgently,  "but  that 
was  'is  way.  That  is  to  say,  'e  pynted  out  very 
frequent,  but  'e  always  made  two  studies  to 
stand ;  one  in  water  colours  and  one  in  oils,  before 
'e  went  at  the  final  picture, —  to  say  nothink  of  all 
the  pose  studies  'e  made  in  pencil  before  he  be- 
gun on  the  composition  proper  at  all.  He  was 
that  particular.  You  see  'e  wasn't  so  keen  for  the 
final  effect  as  for  the  proper  pyntin'  of  'is  pic- 
tures. 'E  used  to  say  they  ought  to  be  well  made, 
the  same  as  any  other  h'article  of  trade.  I  can 
lay  my  'and  on  the  pose  studies  for  you,  sir." 
He  rummaged  in  one  of  the  portfolios  and  pro- 


162  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

duced  half  a  dozen  drawings.  "These  three,"  he 
continued,  "was  discarded:  these  two  was  the 
pose  he  finally  accepted;  this  one  without  altera- 
tion, as  it  were." 

"That's  in  Paris,  as  I  remember,"  James  con- 
tinued reflectively.  "  It  went  with  the  Saint  Cecilia 
into  the  Baron  H — 's  collection.  Could  you  tell 
me,  sir,  'as  'e  it  still  ?  I  don't  like  to  lose  account 
of  them,  but  some  'as  changed  'ands  since  Sir 
'Ugh's  death." 

"H — 's  collection  is  still  intact,  I  believe," 
replied  MacMaster.  "You  were  with  TrefBnger 
long?" 

"From  my  boyhood,  sir,"  replied  James  with 
gravity.  "I  was  a  stable  boy  when  'e  took  me." 

"You  were  his  man,  then  ?" 

"That's  it,  sir.  Nobody  else  ever  done  any- 
thing around  the  studio.  I  always  mixed  'is  col- 
ours and  'e  taught  me  to  do  a  share  of  the  varn- 
ishin';  'e  said  as  'ow  there  wasn't  a  'ouse  in  Eng- 
land as  could  do  it  proper.  You  aynt  looked  at 
the  Marriage  yet,  sir  ?"  he  asked  abruptly,  glanc- 
ing doubtfully  at  MacMaster,  and  indicating 
with  his  thumb  the  picture  under  the  north 
light. 

"  Not  very  closely.  I  prefer  to  begin  with  some- 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  163 

thing  simpler;  that's  rather  appalling,  at  first 
glance,"  replied  MacMaster. 

"Well  may  you  say  that,  sir,"  said  James 
warmly.  "That  one  regular  killed  Sir  'Ugh;  it 
regular  broke  'im  up,  and  nothink  will  ever  con- 
vince me  as  'ow  it  didn't  bring  on  'is  second 
stroke." 

When  MacMaster  walked  back  to  High  Street 
to  take  his  buss,  his  mind  was  divided  between 
two  exultant  convictions.  He  felt  that  he  had 
not  only  found  Treffinger's  greatest  picture,  but 
that,  in  James,  he  had  discovered  a  kind  of 
cryptic  index  to  the  painter's  personality  —  a  clue 
which,  if  tactfully  followed,  might  lead  to  much. 

Several  days  after  his  first  visit  to  the  studio, 
MacMaster  wrote  to  Lady  Mary  Percy,  telling 
her  that  he  would  be  in  London  for  some  time 
and  asking  her  if  he  might  call.  Lady  Mary  was 
an  only  sister  of  Lady  EllenjTreffinger,  the  paint- 
er's widow,  and  MacMaster  had  known  her 
during  one  winter  he  spent  at  Nice.  He  had 
known  her,  indeed,  very  well,  and  Lady  Mary, 
who  was  astonishingly  frank  and  communica- 
tive upon  all  subjects,  had  been  no  less  so 
upon  the  matter  of  her  sister's  unfortunate  mar- 
riage. 


164  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

In  her  reply  to  his  note,  Lady  Mary  named  an 
afternoon  when  she  would  be  alone.  She  was  as 
good  as  her  word,  and  when  MacMaster  ar- 
rived he  found  the  drawing-room  empty.  Lady 
Mary  entered  shortly  after  he  was  announced. 
She  was  a  tall  woman,  thin  and  stiffly  jointed; 
and  her  body  stood  out  under  the  folds  of  her 
gown  with  the  rigour  of  cast-iron.  This  rather 
metallic  suggestion  was  further  carried  out  in 
her  heavily  knuckled  hands,  her  stiff  grey  hair 
and  long,  bold-featured  face,  which  was  saved 
from  freakishness  only  by  her  alert  eyes. 

"Really,"  said  Lady  Mary,  taking  a  seat  be- 
side him  and  giving  him  a  sort  of  military  in- 
spection through  her  nose-glasses,  "  Really,  I  had 
begun  to  fear  that  I  had  lost  you  altogether.  It's 
four  years  since  I  saw  you  at  Nice,  isn't  it  ?  I 
was  in  Paris  last  winter,  but  I  heard  nothing 
from  you." 

"  I  was  in  New  York  then." 

"It  occurred  to  me  that  you  might  be.  And 
why  are  you  in  London  ?  " 

"Can  you  ask?"  replied  MacMaster  gal- 
lantly. 

Lady  Mary  smiled  ironically.  "But  for  what 
else,  incidentally?" 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  165 

"Well,  incidentally,  I  came  to  see  Treffinger's 
studio  and  his  unfinished  picture.  Since  I've 
been  here,  I've  decided  to  stay  the  summer.  I'm 
even  thinking  of  attempting  to  do  a  biography 
of  him." 

"So  that  is  what  brought  you  to  London?" 

"  Not  exactly.  I  had  really  no  intention  of  any- 
thing so  serious  when  I  came.  It's  his  last  picture, 
I  fancy,  that  has  rather  thrust  it  upon  me.  The 
notion  has  settled  down  on  me  like  a  thing 
destined." 

"You'll  not  be  offended  if  I  question  the 
clemency  of  such  a  destiny,"  remarked  Lady 
Mary  dryly.  "Isn't  there  rather  a  surplus  of 
books  on  that  subject  already  ?" 

"Such  as  they  are.  Oh,  I've  read  them  all," 
here  MacMaster  faced  Lady  Mary  triumphantly. 
"He  has  quite  escaped  your  amiable  critics,"  he 
added,  smiling. 

"I  know  well  enough  what  you  think,  and  I 
dare  say  we  are  not  much  on  art,"  said  Lady 
Mary  with  tolerant  good  humour.  "We  leave 
that  to  peoples  who  have  no  physique.  Treffinger 
made  a  stir  for  a  time,  but  it  seems  that  we  are 
not  capable  of  a  sustained  appreciation  of  such 
extraordinary  methods.    In  the  end  we  go  back 


166  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

to  the  pictures  we  find  agreeable  and  unper- 
plexing.  He  was  regarded  as  an  experiment,  I 
fancy;  and  now  it  seems  that  he  was  rather  an 
unsuccessful  one.  If  you've  come  to  us  in  a 
missionary  spirit,  we'll  tolerate  you  politely,  but 
we'll  laugh  in  our  sleeve,  I  warn  you." 

"That  really  dosen't  daunt  me,  Lady  Mary," 
declared  MacMaster  blandly,  "As  I  told  you, 
I'm  a  man  with  a  mission." 

Lady  Mary  laughed  her  hoarse  baritone  laugh. 
"Bravo!  and  you've  come  to  me  for  inspiration 
for  your  panegyric  ?  " 

MacMaster  smiled  with  some  embarrass- 
ment. "Not  altogether  for  that  purpose.  But  I 
want  to  consult  you,  Lady  Mary,  about  the  ad- 
visability of  troubling  Lady  Ellen  Treffinger  in 
the  matter.  It  seems  scarcely  legitimate  to  go  on 
without  asking  her  to  give  some  sort  of  grace  to 
my  proceedings,  yet  I  feared  the  whole  subject 
might  be  painful  to  her.  I  shall  rely  wholly  upon 
your  discretion." 

"I  think  she  would  prefer  to  be  consulted," 
replied  Lady  Mary  judicially.  "I  can't  under- 
stand how  she  endures  to  have  the  wretched  af- 
fair continually  raked  up,  but  she  does.  She 
seems  to  feel  a  sort  of  moral  responsibility.  Ellen 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  167 

has  always  been  singularly  conscientious  about 
this  matter,  in  so  far  as  her  light  goes, —  which 
rather  puzzles  me,  as  hers  is  not  exactly  a  mag- 
nanimous nature.  She  is  certainly  trying  to  do 
what  she  believes  to  be  the  right  thing.  I  shall 
write  to  her,  and  you  can  see  her  when  she  re- 
turns from  Italy." 

"  I  want  very  much  to  meet  her.  She  is,  I  hope, 
quite  recovered  in  every  way,"  queried  MacMas- 
ter,  hesitatingly. 

"No,  I  can't  say  that  she  is.  She  has  remained 
in  much  the  same  condition  she  sank  to  before 
his  death.  He  trampled  over  pretty  much  what- 
ever there  was  in  her,  I  fancy.  Women  don't 
recover  from  wounds  of  that  sort;  at  least,  not 
women  of  Ellen's  grain.  They  go  on  bleeding 
inwardly." 

"You,  at  any  rate  have  not  grown  more 
reconciled,"  MacMaster  ventured. 

"  Oh,  I  give  him  his  dues.  He  was  a  colourist,  I 
grant  you ;  but  that  is  a  vague  and  unsatisfactory 
quality  to  marry  to;  Lady  Ellen  Treffinger  found 
it  so." 

"But,  my  dear  Lady  Mary,"  expostulated 
MacMaster,  "  and  just  repress  me  if  I'm  becom- 
ing too  personal  —  but  it  must,  in  the  first  place, 


168  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

have  been  a  marriage  of  choice  on  her  part  as 
well  as  on  his." 

Lady  Mary  poised  her  glasses  on  her  large 
forefinger  and  assumed  an  attitude  suggestive 
of  the  clinical  lecture  room  as  she  replied.  "El- 
len, my  dear  boy,  is  an  essentially  romantic  per- 
son. She  is  quiet  about  it,  but  she  runs  deep.  I 
never  knew  how  deep  until  I  came  against  her  on 
the  issue  of  that  marriage.  She  was  always  dis- 
contented as  a  girl;  she  found  things  dull  and 
prosaic,  and  the  ardour  of  his  courtship  was 
agreeable  to  her.  He  met  her  during  her  first 
season  in  town.  She  is  handsome,  and  there  were 
plenty  of  other  men,  but  I  grant  you  your  scowl- 
ing brigand  was  the  most  picturesque  of  the  lot. 
In  his  courtship,  as  in  everything  else,  he  was 
theatrical  to  the  point  of  being  ridiculous,  but 
Ellen's  sense  of  humour  is  not  her  strongest 
quality.  He  had  the  charm  of  celebrity,  the  air 
of  a  man  who  could  storm  his  way  through  any- 
thing to  get  what  he  wanted.  That  sort  of  vehem- 
ence is  particularly  effective  with  women  like 
Ellen,  who  can  be  warmed  only  by  reflected 
heat,  and  she  couldn't  at  all  stand  out  against  it. 
He  convinced  her  of  his  necessity;  and  that  done, 
all's  done." 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PELEDRA  169 

"I  can't  help  thinking  that,  even  on  such  a 
basis,  the  marriage  should  have  turned  out  bet- 
ter," MacMaster  remarked  reflectively. 

"The  marriage,"  Lady  Mary  continued  with 
a  shrug,  "was  made  on  the  basis  of  a  mutual 
misunderstanding.  Ellen,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  believed  that  she  was  doing  something 
quite  out  of  the  ordinary  in  accepting  him,  and 
expected  concessions  which,  apparently,  it  never 
occurred  to  him  to  make.  After  his  marriage  he 
relapsed  into  his  old  habits  of  incessant  work, 
broken  by  violent  and  often  brutal  relaxations. 
He  insulted  her  friends  and  foisted  his  own  upon 
her  —  many  of  them  well  calculated  to  arouse 
aversion  in  any  well-bred  girl.  He  had  Ghillini 
constantly  at  the  house  —  a  homeless  vagabond, 
whose  conversation  was  impossible.  I  don't  say, 
mind  you,  that  he  had  not  grievances  on  his  side. 
He  had  probably  over-rated  the  girl's  possibili- 
ties, and  he  let  her  see  that  he  was  disappointed 
in  her.  Only  a  large  and  generous  nature  could 
have  borne  with  him,  and  Ellen's  is  not  that. 
She  could  not  at  all  understand  that  odious 
strain  of  plebeian  pride  which  plumes  itself  upon 
not  having  risen  above  its  sources." 

As  MacMaster  drove  back  to  his  hotel,  he  re- 


170  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

fleeted  that  Lady  Mary  Percy  had  probably  had 
good  cause  for  dissatisfaction  with  her  brother- 
in-law.  Treffinger  was,  indeed,  the  last  man  who 
should  have  married  into  the  Percy  family.  The 
son  of  a  small  tobacconist,  he  had  grown  up  a 
sign  painter's  apprentice;  idle,  lawless,  and 
practically  letterless  until  he  had  drifted  into  the 
night  classes  of  the  Albert  League,  where  Ghil- 
lini  sometimes  lectured.  Prom  the  moment  he 
came  under  the  -eye  and  influence  of  that  erratic 
Italian,  then  a  political  exile,  his  life  had  swerved 
sharply  from  its  old  channel.  This  man  had  been 
at  once  incentive  and  guide,  friend  and  master, 
to  his  pupil.  He  had  taken  the  raw  clay  out  of  the 
London  streets  and  moulded  it  anew.  Seemingly 
he  had  divined  at  once  where  the  boy's  possi- 
bilities lay,  and  had  thrown  aside  every  canon 
of  orthodox  instruction  in  the  training  of  him. 
Under  him  Treffinger  acquired  his  superficial, 
yet  facile,  knowledge  of  the  classics ;  had  steeped 
himself  in  the  monkish  Latin  and  mediaeval 
romances  which  later  gave  his  work  so  naive  and 
remote  a  quality.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the 
wattle  fences,  the  cobble  pave,  the  brown  roof 
beams,  the  cunningly  wrought  fabrics  that  gave  to 
his  pictures  such  a  richness  of  decorative  effect. 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PHLEDRA  171 

As  he  had  told  Lady  Mary  Percy,  MacMaster 
had  found  the  imperative  inspiration  of  his  pur- 
pose in  Treffinger's  unfinished  picture,  the  Mar- 
riage of  Ph&dra.  He  had  always  believed  that 
the  key  to  Treffinger's  individuality  lay  in  his 
singular  education ;  in  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  in 
Boccaccio,  and  Amadis,  those  works  which  had 
literally  transcribed  themselves  upon  the  blank 
soul  of  the  London  street  boy,  and  through 
which  he  had  been  born  into  the  world  of  spir- 
itual things.  Treffinger  had  been  a  man  who  lived 
after  his  imagination;  and  his  mind,  his  ideals 
and,  as  MacMaster  believed,  even  his  personal 
ethics,  had  to  the  last  been  coloured  by  the  trend 
of  his  early  training.  There  was  in  him  alike  the 
freshness  and  spontaneity,  the  frank  brutality 
and  the  religious  mysticism  which  lay  well  back 
of  the  fifteenth  century.  In  the  Marriage  of 
Phwdra  MacMaster  found  the  ultimate  ex- 
pression of  this  spirit,  the  final  word  as  to  Tref- 
finger's point  of  view. 

As  in  all  Treffinger's  classical  subjects,  the 
conception  was  wholly  mediaeval.  This  Phae- 
dra, just  turning  from  her  husband  and  maidens 
to  greet  her  husband's  son,  giving  him  her  first 
fearsome  glance  from  under  her  half  lifted  veil, 


172  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

wais  no  daughter  of  Minos.  The  daughter  of 
heathenesse  and  the  early  church  she  was ;  doom- 
ed to  torturing  visions  and  scourgings,  and  the 
wrangling  of  soul  with  flesh.  The  venerable 
Theseus  might  have  been  victorious  Charle- 
magne, and  Phaedra's  maidens  belonged  rather 
in  the  train  of  Blanche  of  Castile  than  at  the 
Cretan  court.  In  the  earlier  studies  Hippolytus 
had  been  done  with  a  more  pagan  suggestion, 
but  in  each  successive  drawing  the  glorious  figure 
had  been  deflowered  of  something  of  its  serene 
unconsciousness;  until,  in  the  canvas  under  the 
skylight,  he  appeared  a  very  Christian  knight. 
This  male  figure,  and  the  face  of  Phaedra,  paint- 
ed with  such  magical  preservation  of  tone  under 
the  heavy  shadow  of  the  veil,  were  plainly  Tref- 
finger's  highest  achievements  of  craftsmanship. 
By  what  labour  he  had  reached  the  seemingly 
inevitable  composition  of  the  picture  —  with  its 
twenty  figures,  its  plenitude  of  light  and  air,  its 
restful  distances  seen  through  white  porticoes  — 
countless  studies  bore  witness. 

From  James's  attitude  toward  the  picture,  Mac- 
Master  could  well  conjecture  what  the  painter's 
had  been.  This  picture  was  always  uppermost  in 
James's  mind;  its  custodianship  formed,  in  his 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  173 

eyes,  his  occupation.  He  was  manifestly  appre- 
hensive when  visitors  —  not  many  came  now- 
a-days  —  lingered  near  it.  "It  was  the  Marriage 
as  killed  'im,"  he  would  often  say,  "and  for  the 
matter  'o  that,  it  did  like  to  'av  been  the  death 
of  all  of  us." 

By  the  end  of  his  second  week  in  London, 
MacMaster  had  begun  tfie  notes  for  his  study  of 
Hugh  Treffinger  and  his  work.  When  his  re- 
searches led  him  occasionally  to  visit  the  studios 
of  Treffinger's  friends  and  erstwhile  disciples,  he 
found  their  Treffinger  manner  fading  as  the 
ring  Treffinger's  personality  died  out  in  them. 
One  by  one  they  were  stealing  back  into  the  fold 
of  national  British  art;  the  hand  that  had  wound 
them  up  was  still.  MacMaster  despaired  of  them 
and  confined  himself  more  and  more  exclusively 
to  the  studio,  to  such  of  Treffinger's  letters  as 
were  available  —  they  were  for  the  most  part 
singularly  negative  and  colourless  —  and  to  his 
interrogation  of  Treffinger's  man. 

He  could  not  himself  have  traced  the  succes- 
sive steps  by  which  he  was  gradually  admitted 
into  James's  confidence.  Certainly  most  of  his 
adroit  strategies  to  that  end  failed  humiliatingly, 
and  whatever  it  was  that  built  up  an  understand- 


174  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

ing  between  them,  must  have  been  instinctive  and 
intuitive  on  both  sides.  When  at  last  James  be- 
came anecdotal,  personal,  there  was  that  in 
every  word  he  let  fall  which  put  breath  and 
blood  into  MacMaster's  book.  James  had  so 
long  been  steeped  in  that  penetrating  personality 
that  he  fairly  exuded  it.  Many  of  his  very  phrases, 
mannerisms  and  opinions  were  impressions  that 
he  had  taken  on  like  wet  plaster  in  his  daily  con- 
tact with  Treffinger.  Inwardly  he  was  lined  with 
cast  off  epithelia,  as  outwardly  he  was  clad  in  the 
painter's  discarded  coats.  If  the  painter's  letters 
were  formal  and  perfunctory,  if  his  expressions 
to  his  friends  had  been  extravagant,  contradic- 
tory and  often  apparently  insincere  —  still,  Mac- 
Master  felt  himself  not  entirely  without  authen- 
tic sources.  It  was  James  who  possessed  Treffin- 
ger's  legend;  it  was  with  James  that  he  had  laid 
aside  his  pose.  Only  in  his  studio,  alone,  and 
face  to  face  with  his  work,  as  it  seemed,  had 
the  man  invariably  been  himself.  James  had 
known  him  in  the  one  attitude  in  which  he  was 
entirely  honest;  their  relation  had  fallen  well 
within  the  painter's  only  indubitable  integrity. 
James's  report  of  Treffinger  was  distorted  by  no 
hallucination  of  artistic  insight,  coloured  by  no 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PELEDRA  175 

interpretation  of  his  own.  He  merely  held  what 
he  had  heard  and  seen;  his  mind  was  a  sort  of 
camera  obscura.  His  very  limitations  made 
him  the  more  literal  and  minutely  accurate. 

One  morning  when  MacMaster  was  seated 
before  the  Marriage  of  Phwdra,  James  entered 
on  his  usual  round  of  dusting. 

"I've  'eard  from  Lydy  Elling  by  the  post, 
sir,"  he  remarked,  "  an'  she's  give  h'orders  to 
'ave  the  'ouse  put  in  readiness.  I  doubt  she'll  be 
'ere  by  Thursday  or  Friday  next." 

"She  spends  most  of  her  time  abroad?" 
queried  MacMaster;  on  the  subject  of  Lady 
Treffinger  James  consistently  maintained  a  very 
delicate  reserve. 

"  Well,  you  could  'ardly  say  she  does  that,  sir. 
She  finds  the  'ouse  a  bit  dull,  I  daresay,  so  durin' 
the  season  she  stops  mostly  with  Lydy  Mary 
Percy,  at  Grosvenor  Square.  Lydy  Mary's  a 
h'only  sister."  After  a  few  moments  he  contin- 
ued, speaking  in  jerks  governed  by  the  rigour  of 
his  dusting:  "Honly  this  morning  I  come  upon 
this  scarf-pin,"  exhibiting  a  very  striking  in- 
stance of  that  article,  "an'  I  recalled  as  'ow 
Sir  'Ugh  give  it  me  when  'e  was  a-courting  of  Lydy 
Elling.    Blowed  if  I  ever  see  a  man  go  in  for  a 


176  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

'oman  like  'im!  'E  was  that  gone,  sir.  'E  never 
went  in  on  anythink  so  'ard  before  nor  since,  till 
'e  went  in  on  the  Marriage  there  —  though  'e 
mostly  went  in  on  things  pretty  keen;  'ad  the 
measles  when  'e  was  thirty,  strong  as  cholera, 
an'  come  close  to  dyin'  of  'em.  'E  wasn't  strong 
for  Lydy  Elling's  set;  they  was  a  bit  too  stiff 
for  'im.  A  free  an'  easy  gentleman,  'e  was;  'e 
liked  'is  dinner  with  a  few  friends  an'  them 
jolly,  but  'e  wasn't  much  on  what  you  might 
call  big  affairs.  But  once  'e  went  in  for  Lydy 
Elling,  'e  broke  'imself  to  new  paces.  He  give 
away  'is  rings  an'  pins,  an'  the  tylor's  man  an' 
the  'abberdasher's  man  was  at  'is  rooms  contin- 
ual. 'E  got  'imself  put  up  for  a  club  in  Piccadilly; 
'e  starved  'imself  thin,  an'  worrited  'imself  white, 
an'  ironed  'imself  out,  an'  drawed  'imself  tight 
as  a  bow  string.  It  was  a  good  job  'e  come  a 
winner,  or  I  don't  know  w'at'd  'a  been  to  pay." 
The  next  week,  in  consequence  of  an  invita- 
tion from  Lady  Ellen  Treffinger,  MacMaster 
went  one  afternoon  to  take  tea  with  her.  He  was 
shown  into  the  garden  that  lay  between  the  resi- 
dence and  the  studio,  where  the  tea-table  was  set 
under  a  gnarled  pear  tree.  Lady  Ellen  rose  as 
he    approached  —  he   was    astonished    to    note 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  177 

how  tall  she  was  —  and  greeted  him  graciously, 
saying  that  she  already  knew  him  through  her 
sister.  MacMaster  felt  a  certain  satisfaction  in 
her;  in  her  reassuring  poise  and  repose,  in  the 
charming  modulations  of  her  voice  and  the  in- 
dolent reserve  of  her  full,  almond  eyes.  He  was 
even  delighted  to  find  her  face  so  inscrutable, 
though  it  chilled  his  own  warmth  and  made  the 
open  frankness  he  had  wished  to  permit  himself 
impossible.  It  was  a  long  face,  narrow  at  the 
chin,  very  delicately  featured,  yet  steeled  by  an 
impassive  mask  of  self-control.  It  was  behind 
just  such  finely  cut,  close-sealed  faces,  Mac- 
Master  reflected,  that  nature  sometimes  hid 
astonishing  secrets.  But  in  spite  of  this  sugges- 
tion of  hardness,  he  felt  that  the  unerring  taste 
that  Treffinger  had  always  shown  in  larger 
matters  had  not  deserted  him  when  he  came 
to  the  choosing  of  a  wife,  and  he  admitted 
that  he  could  not  himself  have  selected  a  wo- 
man who  looked  more  as  Trefrmger's  wife  should 
look. 

While  he  was  explaining  the  purpose  of  his  fre- 
quent visits  to  the  studio,  she  heard  him  with 
courteous  interest.  "I  have  read,  I  think,  every- 
thing that  has  been  published  on  Sir  Hugh  Tref- 


178  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

finger's  work,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is 
much  left  to  be  said,"  he  concluded. 

"I  believe  they  are  rather  inadequate,"  she 
remarked  vaguely.  She  hesitated  a  moment,  ab- 
sently fingering  the  ribbons  of  her  gown,  then 
continued,  without  raising  her  eyes;  "I  hope  you 
will  not  think  me  too  exacting  if  I  ask  to  see  the 
proofs  of  such  chapters  of  your  work  as  have  to 
do  with  Sir  Hugh's  personal  life.  I  have  always 
asked  that  privilege." 

MacMaster  hastily  assured  her  as  to  this,  add- 
ing, "I  mean  to  touch  on  only  such  facts  in  his 
personal  life  as  have  to  do  directly  with  his 
work  —  such  as  his  monkish  education  under 
Ghillini." 

"I  see  your  meaning,  I  think,"  said  Lady 
Ellen,  looking  at  him  with  wide,  uncompre- 
hending eyes. 

When  MacMaster  stopped  at  the  studio  on 
leaving  the  house,  he  stood  for  some  time  before 
TrefBnger's  one  portrait  of  himself;  that  brigand 
of  a  picture,  with  its  full  throat  and  square  head ; 
the  short  upper  lip  blackened  by  the  close- 
clipped  moustache,  the  wiry  hair  tossed  down  over 
the  forehead,  the  strong  white  teeth  set  hard  on 
a  short  pipe  stem.  He  could  well  understand 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  179 

what  manifold  tortures  the  mere  grain  of  the 
man's  strong  red  and  brown  flesh  might  have  in- 
flicted upon  a  woman  like  Lady  Ellen.  He  could 
conjecture,  too,  Treffinger's  impotent  revolt 
against  that  very  repose  which  had  so  dazzled 
him  when  it  first  defied  his  daring;  and  how 
once  possessed  of  it,  his  first  instinct  had  been 
to  crush  it,  since  he  could  not  melt  it. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  season,  Lady  Ellen 
Treffinger  left  town.  MacMaster's  work  was  pro- 
gressing rapidly,  and  he  and  James  wore  away 
the  days  in  their  peculiar  relation,  which  by  this 
time  had  much  of  friendliness.  Excepting  for  the 
regular  visits  of  a  Jewish  picture  dealer,  there 
were  few  intrusions  upon  their  solitude.  Oc- 
casionally a  party  of  Americans  rang  at  the  little 
door  in  the  garden  wall,  but  usually  they  de- 
parted speedily  for  the  Moorish  hall  and  tinkling 
fountain  of  the  great  show  studio  of  London,  not 
far  away. 

This  Jew,  an  Austrian  by  birth,  who  had  a 
large  business  in  Melbourne,  Australia,  was  a 
man  of  considerable  discrimination,  and  at  once 
selected  the  Marriage  of  Phoedra  as  the  object 
of  his  especial  interest.  When,  upon  his  first 
visit,  Lichtenstein  had  declared  the  picture  one 


180  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

of  the  things  done  for  time,  MacMaster  had 
rather  warmed  toward  him  and  had  talked  to  him 
very  freely.  Later,  however,  the  man's  repulsive 
personality  and  innate  vulgarity  so  wore  upon 
him  that,  the  more  genuine  the  Jew's  apprecia- 
tion, the  more  he  resented  it  and  the  more  base 
he  somehow  felt  it  to  be.  It  annoyed  him  to  see 
Lichtenstein  walking  up  and  down  before  the 
picture,  shaking  his  head  and  blinking  his  watery 
eyes  over  his  nose-glasses,  ejaculating:  "Dot  is  a 
chem,  a  chem!  It  is  wordt  to  gome  den  dousant 
miles  for  such  a  bainting,  eh  ?  To  make  Eurobe 
abbreciate  such  a  work  of  ardt  it  is  necessary 
to  take  it  away  while  she  is  napping.  She  has 
never  abbreciated  until  she  has  lost,  but,"  know- 
ingly, "  She  will  buy  back." 

James  had,  from  the  first,  felt  such  a  distrust 
of  the  man  that  he  would  never  leave  him  alone  in 
the  studio  for  a  moment.  When  Lichtenstein  in- 
sisted upon  having  Lady  Ellen  Treffinger's  ad- 
dress, James  rose  to  the  point  of  insolence.  "It 
ay'nt  no  use  to  give  it,  noway.  Lydy  Treffinger 
never  has  nothink  to  do  with  dealers."  MacMaster 
quietly  repented  his  rash  confidences,  fearing  that 
he  might  indirectly  cause  Lady  Ellen  annoy- 
ance from  this  merciless  speculator,  and  he  re- 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  181 

called  with  chagrin  that  Lichtenstein  had  ex- 
torted from  him,  little  by  little,  pretty  much  the 
entire  plan  of  his  book,  and  especially  the  place  in 
it  which  the  Marriage  of  Phwdra  was  to  occupy. 

By  this  time  the  first  chapters  of  MacMas- 
ter's  book  were  in  the  hands  of  his  publisher,  and 
his  visits  to  the  studio  were  necessarily  less  fre- 
quent. The  greater  part  of  his  time  was  now  em- 
ployed with  the  engravers  who  were  to  reproduce 
such  of  Treffinger's  pictures  as  he  intended  to 
use  as  illustrations. 

He  returned  to  his  hotel  late  one  evening  after 
a  long  and  vexing  day  at  the  engravers,  to  find 
James  in  his  room,  seated  on  his  steamer  trunk 
by  the  window,  with  the  outline  of  a  great  square 
draped  in  sheets  resting  against  his  knee. 

"Why,  James,  what's  up?"  he  cried  in  as- 
tonishment, glancing  enquiringly  at  the  sheeted 
object. 

"Ay'nt  you  seen  the  pypers,  sir?"  jerked  out 
the  man. 

"No,  now  I  think  of  it,  I  haven't  even  looked 
at  a  paper.  I've  been  at  the  engravers'  plant  all 
day.  I  haven't  seen  anything." 

James  drew  a  copy  of  the  Times  from  his 
pocket  and  handed  it  to  him,  pointing  with  a 


182  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

tragic  finger  to  a  paragraph  in  the  social  column. 
It  was  merely  the  announcement  of  Lady  Ellen 
Treffinger's  engagement  to  Captain  Alexander 
Gresham. 

"  Well,  what  of  it,  my  man  ?  That  surely  is  her 
privilege." 

James  took  the  paper,  turned  to  another  page, 
and  silently  pointed  to  a  paragraph  in  the  art 
notes  which  stated  that  Lady  TrefBnger  had  pre- 
sented to  the  X —  gallery  the  entire  collection 
of  paintings  and  sketches  now  in  her  late  hus- 
band's studio,  with  the  exception  of  his  unfin- 
ished picture,  the  Marriage  of  Phwdra,  which 
she  had  sold  for  a  large  sum  to  an  Australian 
dealer  who  had  come  to  London  purposely  to 
secure  some  of  Treffinger's  paintings. 

MacMaster  pursed  up  his  lips  and  sat  down, 
his  overcoat  still  on.  "Well,  James,  this  is  some- 
thing of  a  —  something  of  a  jolt,  eh  ?  It  never 
occurred  to  me  she'd  really  do  it." 

"Lord,  you  don't  know  'er,  sir,"  said  James 
bitterly,  still  staring  at  the  floor  in  an  attitude  of 
abandoned  dejection. 

MacMaster  started  up  in  a  flash  of  enlighten- 
ment, "What  on  earth  have  you  got  there, 
James  ?  It's  not  —  surely  it's  not  — " 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  183 

"Yes,  it  is,  sir,"  broke  in  the  man  excitedly. 
"It's  the  Marriage  itself.  It  aynt  a-going  to 
H'australia,  no'ow!" 

"But  man,  what  are  you  going  to  do  with 
it  ?  It's  Lichtenstein's  property  now,  as  it  seems." 

"  It  aynt,  sir,  that  it  aynt.  No,  by  Gawd  it  aynt !" 
shouted  James,  breaking  into  a  choking  fury. 
He  controlled  himself  with  an  effort  and  added 
supplicatingly :  "Oh,  sir,  you  aynt  a-going  to 
see  it  go  to  H'australia,  w'ere  they  send  con- 
vic's?"  He  unpinned  and  flung  aside  the  sheets 
as  though  to  let  Phwdra  plead  for  herself. 

MacMaster  sat  down  again  and  looked  sadly 
at  the  doomed  masterpiece.  The  notion  of 
James  having  carried  it  across  London  that 
night  rather  appealed  to  his  fancy.  There  was 
certainly  a  flavour  about  such  a  high-handed  pro- 
ceeding. "However  did  you  get  it  here?"  he 
queried. 

"I  got  a  four-wheeler  and  come  over  direct, 
sir.  Good  job  I  'appened  to  'ave  the  chaynge 
about  me." 

"You  came  up  High  Street,  up  Piccadilly, 
through  the  Haymarket  and  Trafalgar  Square, 
and  into  the  Strand?"  queried  MacMaster  with 
a  relish. 


184  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

'Yes,  sir.  Of  course,  sir,"  assented  James 
with  surprise. 

MacMaster  laughed  delightedly.  "It  was  a 
beautiful  idea,  James,  but  I'm  afraid  we  can't 
carry  it  any  further." 

"I  was  thinkin'  as  'ow  it  would  be  a  rare 
chance  to  get  you  to  take  the  Marriage  over  to 
Paris  for  a  year  or  two,  sir,  until  the  thing  blows 
over?"  suggested  James  blandly. 

"I'm  afraid  that's  out  of  the  question,  James. 
I  haven't  the  right  stuff  in  me  for  a  pirate,  or 
even  a  vulgar  smuggler,  I'm  afraid."  Mac- 
Master  found  it  surprisingly  difficult  to  say 
this,  and  he  busied  himself  with  the  lamp  as 
he  said  it.  He  heard  James's  hand  fall  heavily 
on  the  trunk  top,  and  he  discovered  that  he 
very  much  disliked  sinking  in  the  man's  estima- 
tion. 

"Well,  sir,"  remarked  James  in  a  more  for- 
mal tone,  after  a  protracted  silence;  "then 
there's  nothink  for  it  but  as  'ow  I'll  'ave  to  make 
way  with  it  myself." 

"And  how  about  your  character,  James? 
The  evidence  would  be  heavy  against  you,  and 
even  if  Lady  Treffinger  didn't  prosecute,  you'd 
be  done  for." 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  185 

"Blow  my  character!  —  your  pardon,  sir," 
cried  James,  starting  to  his  feet.  "  Wat  do  I  want 
of  a  character?  I'll  chuck  the  'ole  thing,  and 
damned  lively,  too.  The  shop's  to  be  sold  out, 
an'  my  place  is  gone  any'ow.  I'm  a-going  to  en- 
list, or  try  the  gold-fields.  I've  lived  too  long  with 
h' artists  ;  I'd  never  give  satisfaction  in  livery 
now.  You  know  'ow  it  is  yourself,  sir;  there 
aynt  no  life  like  it,  no'ow." 

For  a  moment  MacMaster  was  almost  equal 
to  abetting  James  in  his  theft.  He  reflected  that 
pictures  had  been  white-washed,  or  hidden  in  the 
crypts  of  churches,  or  under  the  floors  of  palaces 
from  meaner  motives,  and  to  save  them  from  a 
fate  less  ignominious.  But  presently,  with  a  sigh, 
he  shook  his  head. 

"No,  James,  it  won't  do  at  all.  It  has  been 
tried  over  and  over  again,  ever  since  the  world 
has  been  a-going  and  pictures  a-making.  It  was 
tried  in  Florence  and  in  Venice,  but  the  pictures 
were  always  carried  away  in  the  end.  You  see 
the  difficulty  is  that,  although  Treffinger  told 
you  what  was  not  to  be  done  with  the  picture, 
he  did  not  say  definitely  what  was  to  be  done 
with  it.  Do  you  think  Lady  Treffinger  really  un- 
derstands that  he  did  not  want  it  to  be  sold  ?" 


186  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"Well,  sir,  it  was  like  this,  sir,"  said  James  re- 
suming his  seat  on  the  trunk  and  again  resting 
the  picture  against  his  knee.  "My  memory  is  as 
clear  as  glass  about  it.  After  Sir  'Ugh  got  up 
from  'is  first  stroke,  'e  took  a  fresh  start  at  the 
Marriage.  Before  that  'e  'ad  been  working  at  it 
only  at  night  for  awhile  back;  the  Legend  was 
the  big  picture  then,  an'  was  under  the  north 
light  w'ere  'e  worked  of  a  morning.  But  one  day 
'e  bid  me  take  the  Legend  down  an'  put  the 
Marriage  in  its  place,  an'  'e  says,  dashin'  on  'is 
jacket,  '  Jymes,  this  is  a  start  for  the  finish,  this 
time.'" 

"From  that  on  'e  worked  at  the  night  picture 
in  the  mornin' —  a  thing  contrary  to  'is  custom. 
The  Marriage  went  wrong,  and  wrong  —  an' 
Sir  'Ugh  a-gettin'  seedier  an'  seedier  every  day. 
'E  tried  models  an'  models,  an'  smudged  an' 
pynted  out  on  account  of  'er  face  goin'  wrong 
in  the  shadow.  Sometimes  'e  layed  it  on  the  col- 
ours, an'  swore  at  me  an'  things  general.  He  got 
that  discouraged  about  'imself  that  on  'is  low 
days  'e  used  to  say  to  me:  'Jymes,  remember 
one  thing;  if  anythink  'appens  to  me,  the  Mar- 
riage is  not  to  go  out  of  'ere  unfinished.  It's 
worth  the  lot  of  'em,  my  boy,  an'  it's  not  a-going 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PH^DRA  187 

to  go  shabby  for  lack  of  pains.'  'E  said  things 
to  that  effect  repeated." 

"He  was  workin'  at  the  picture  the  last  day, 
before  'e  went  to  'is  club.  'E  kept  the  carriage 
waitin'  near  an  hour  while  'e  put  on  a  stroke  an' 
then  drawed  back  for  to  look  at  it,  an'  then  put 
on  another,  careful  like.  After  'e  'ad  'is  gloves  on, 
'e  come  back  an'  took  away  the  brushes  I  was 
startin'  to  clean,  an'  put  in  another  touch  or  two. 
'It's  a-comin'  Jymes,'  'e  says,  'by  gad  if  it  aynt.' 
An'  with  that  'e  goes  out.  It  was  cruel  sudden, 
w'at  come  after. 

"That  night  I  was  lookin'  to  'is  clothes  at  the 
'ouse  when  they  brought  'im  'ome.  He  was  con- 
scious, but  w'en  I  ran  down  stairs  for  to  'elp  lift 
'im  up,  I  knowed  'e  was  a  finished  man.  After 
we  got  'im  into  bed,  'e  kept  lookin'  restless  at  me 
and  then  at  Lydy  Elling  and  a-jerkin'  of  'is  'and. 
Finally  'e  quite  raised  it  an'  shot  'is  thumb  out 
towards  the  wall.  'He  wants  water;  ring  Jymes,' 
says  Lydy  Elling,  placid.  But  I  knowed  'e  was 
pointin'  to  the  shop. 

" '  Lydy  Treffinger,'  says  I,  bold,  '  he's  pointin' 
to  the  studio.  He  means  about  the  Marriage; 
'e  told  me  to-day  as  'ow  'e  never  wanted  it  sold 
unfinished.  Is  that  it,  Sir  'Ugh  ? ' 


188  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

"  He  smiled  an'  nodded  slight  an'  closed  'is 
eyes.  'Thank  you,  Jymes,'  says  Lydy  Elling, 
placid.  Then  'e  opened  'is  eyes  an'  looked  long 
and  'ard  at  Lydy  Elling. 

" '  Of  course  I'll  try  to  do  as  you'd  wish  about 
the  pictures,  'Ugh,  if  that's  w'at's  troublin' 
you,'  she  says  quiet.  With  that  'e  closed  'is  eyes 
and  'e  never  opened  'em.  He  died  unconscious 
at  four  that  mornin'." 

"You  see,  sir,  Lydy  Elling  was  always  cruel 
'ard  on  the  Marriage.  From  the  first  it  went 
wrong,  an'  Sir  'Ugh  was  out  of  temper  pretty  con- 
stant. She  came  into  the  studio  one  day  and 
looked  at  the  picture  an'  asked  'im  why  'e  didn't 
throw  it  up  an'  quit  a-worriting  'imself.  He  an- 
swered sharp,  an'  with  that  she  said  as  'ow  she 
didn't  see  w'at  there  was  to  make  such  a  row 
about,  no'ow.  She  spoke  'er  mind  about  that 
picture,  free;  an'  Sir  'Ugh  swore  'ot  an'  let  a 
'andful  of  brushes  fly  at  'is  study,  an'  Lydy  Ell- 
ing picked  up  'er  skirts  careful  an'  chill,  an'  drift- 
ed out  of  the  studio  with  'er  eyes  calm  and  'er  chin 
'igh.  If  there  was  one  thing  Lydy  Elling  'ad  no 
comprehension  of,  it  was  the  usefulness  of  swear- 
in'.  So  the  Marriage  was  a  sore  thing  between 
'em.  She  is  uncommon  calm,  but  uncommon  bit- 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  189 

ter,  is  Lydy  Elling.  She's  never  come  a-near 
the  studio  since  that  day  she  went  out  'oldin' 
up  of  'er  skirts.  Wen  'er  friends  goes  over 
she  excuses  'erself  along  o'  the  strain.  Strain  — 
Gawd!"  James  ground  his  wrath  short  in  his 
teeth. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do,  James,  and  it's  our 
only  hope.  I'll  see  Lady  Ellen  to-morrow.  The 
Times  says  she  returned  to-day.  You  take  the 
picture  back  to  its  place,  and  I'll  do  what  I  can 
for  it.  If  anything  is  done  to  save  it,  it  must  be 
done  through  Lady  Ellen  Treffinger  herself; 
that  much  is  clear.  I  can't  think  that  she  fully 
understands  the  situation.  If  she  did,  you  know, 
she  really  couldn't  have  any  motive — "  He 
stopped  suddenly.  Somehow,  in  the  dusky  lamp- 
light her  small,  close-sealed  face  came  ominously 
back  to  him.  He  rubbed  his  forehead  and  knitted 
his  brows  thoughtfully.  After  a  moment  he  shook 
his  head  and  went  on:  "I  am  positive  that  noth- 
ing can  be  gained  by  high-handed  methods, 
James.  Captain  Gresham  is  one  of  the  most  pop- 
ular men  in  London,  and  his  friends  would  tear 
up  Treffinger's  bones  if  he  were  annoyed  by  any 
scandal  of  our  making  —  and  this  scheme  you 
propose  would  inevitably  result  in  scandal.  Lady 


190  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Ellen  has,  of  course,  every  legal  right  to  sell  the 
picture.  Treffinger  made  considerable  inroads 
upon  her  estate,  and,  as  she  is  about  to  marry  a 
man  without  income,  she  doubtless  feels  that  she 
has  a  right  to  replenish  her  patrimony." 

He  found  James  amenable,  though  doggedly 
sceptical.  He  went  down  into  the  street,  called  a 
carriage,  and  saw  James  and  his  burden  into  it. 
Standing  in  the  doorway,  he  watched  the  car- 
riage roll  away  through  the  drizzling  mist, 
weave  in  and  out  among  the  wet,  black  vehicles 
and  darting  cab  lights,  until  it  was  swallowed 
up  in  the  glare  and  confusion  of  the  Strand. 
"It  is  rather  a  fine  touch  of  irony,"  he  reflected, 
"that  he,  who  is  so  out  of  it,  should  be  the  one 
to  really  care.  Poor  Treffinger,"  he  murmured 
as,  with  a  rather  spiritless  smile,  he  turned 
back  into  his  hotel,  "Poor  Treffinger;  sic  transit 
gloria." 

The  next  afternoon  MacMaster  kept  his 
promise.  When  he  arrived  at  Lady  Mary  Percy's 
house  he  saw  preparations  for  a  function  of 
some  sort,  but  he  went  resolutely  up  the  steps, 
telling  the  footman  that  his  business  was  urgent. 
Lady  Ellen  came  down  alone,  excusing  her  sis- 
ter.  She  was  dressed  for  receiving,   and  Mac- 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  PILEDRA  191 

Master  had  never  seen  her  so  beautiful.  The  col- 
our in  her  cheeks  sent  a  softening  glow  over  her 
small,  delicately  cut  features. 

MacMaster  apologized  for  his  intrusion  and 
came  unflinchingly  to  the  object  of  his  call.  He 
had  come,  he  said,  not  only  to  offer  her  his  warm- 
est congratulations,  but  to  express  his  regret  that 
a  great  work  of  art  was  to  leave  England. 

Lady  Treffinger  looked  at  him  in  wide-eyed 
astonishment.  Surely,  she  said,  she  had  been 
careful  to  select  the  best  of  the  pictures  for  the 
X —  gallery,  in  accordance  with  Sir  Hugh 
Treffinger's  wishes. 

"  And  did  he  —  pardon  me,  Lady  Treffinger, 
but  in  mercy  set  my  mind  at  rest  —  did  he  or  did 
he  not  express  any  definite  wish  concerning  this 
one  picture,  which  to  me  seems  worth  all  the 
others,  unfinished  as  it  is?" 

Lady  Treffinger  paled  perceptibly,  but  it  was 
not  the  pallor  of  confusion.  When  she  spoke 
there  was  a  sharp  tremor  in  her  smooth  voice, 
the  edge  of  a  resentment  that  tore  her  like  pain. 
"  I  think  his  man  has  some  such  impression,  but 
I  believe  it  to  be  utterly  unfounded.  I  cannot 
find  that  he  ever  expressed  any  wish  concerning 
the  disposition  of  the  picture  to  any  of  his  friends. 


192  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Unfortunately,  Sir  Hugh  was  not  always  dis- 
creet in  his  remarks  to  his  servants." 

"Captain  Gresham,  Lady  Ellingham  and 
Miss  Ellingham/'  announced  a  servant,  appear- 
ing at  the  door. 

There  was  a  murmur  in  the  hall,  and  Mac- 
Master  greeted  the  smiling  Captain  and  his  aunt 
as  he  bowed  himself  out. 

To  all  intents  and  purposes  the  Marriage  of 
Ph&dra  was  already  entombed  in  a  vague  con- 
tinent in  the  Pacific,  somewhere  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world. 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE 


A  WAGNER   MATINEE 

I  received  one  morning  a  letter,  written  in  pale 
ink  on  glassy,  blue-lined  note-paper,  and  bearing 
the  postmark  of  a  little  Nebraska  village.  This 
communication,  worn  and  rubbed,  looking  as 
though  it  had  been  carried  for  some  days  in  a 
coat  pocket  that  was  none  too  clean,  was  from 
my  uncle  Howard  and  informed  me  that  his 
wife  had  been  left  a  small  legacy  by  a  bachelor 
relative  who  had  recently  died,  and  that  it  would 
be  necessary  for  her  to  go  to  Boston  to  attend  to 
the  settling  of  the  estate.  He  requested  me  to 
meet  her  at  the  station  and  render  her  whatever 
services  might  be  necessary.  On  examining  the 
date  indicated  as  that  of  her  arrival,  I  found  it 
no  later  than  to-morrow.  He  had  characteristi- 
cally delayed  writing  until,  had  I  been  away 
from  home  for  a  day,  I  must  have  missed  the 
good  woman  altogether. 
The  name  of  my  Aunt  Georgiana  called  up 


196  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

not  alone  her  own  figure,  at  once  pathetic 
and  grotesque,  but  opened  before  my  feet  a 
gulf  of  recollection  so  wide  and  deep,  that,  as 
the  letter  dropped  from  my  hand,  I  felt 
suddenly  a  stranger  to  all  the  present  con- 
ditions of  my  existence,  wholly  ill  at  ease  and  out 
of  place  amid  the  familiar  surroundings  of  my 
study.  I  became,  in  short,  the  gangling  farmer- 
boy  my  aunt  had  known,  scourged  with  chil- 
blains and  bashfulness,  my  hands  cracked  and 
sore  from  the  corn  husking.  I  felt  the  knuckles  of 
my  thumb  tentatively,  as  though  they  were  raw 
again.  I  sat  again  before  her  parlour  organ, 
fumbling  the  scales  with  my  stiff,  red  hands, 
while  she,  beside  me,  made  canvas  mittens  for 
the  huskers. 

The  next  morning,  after  preparing  my  land- 
lady somewhat,  I  set  out  for  the  station.  When 
the  train  arrived  I  had  some  difficulty  in  finding 
my  aunt.  She  was  the  last  of  the  passengers  to 
alight,  and  it  was  not  until  I  got  her  into  the 
carriage  that  she  seemed  really  to  recognize  me. 
She  had  come  all  the  way  in  a  day  coach;  her 
linen  duster  had  become  bl'ack  with  soot  and 
her  black  bonnet  grey  with  dust  during  the 
journey.     When    we    arrived   at  my  boarding- 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  197 

house  the  landlady  put  her  to  bed  at  once  and 
I  did  not  see  her  again  until  the  next  morning. 
Whatever  shock  Mrs.  Springer  experienced  at 
my  aunt's  appearance,  she  considerately  con- 
cealed. As  for  myself,  I  saw  my  aunt's  misshapen 
figure  with  that  feeling  of  awe  and  respect  with 
which  we  behold  explorers  who  have  left  their  ears 
and  fingers  north  of  Franz-Joseph-Land,  or  their 
health  somewhere  along  the  Upper  Congo.  My 
Aunt  Georgiana  had  been  a  music  teacher  at 
the  Boston  Conservatory,  somewhere  back  in  the 
latter  sixties.  One  summer,  while  visiting  in 
the  little  village  among  the  Green  Mountains 
where  her  ancestors  had  dwelt  for  generations, 
she  had  kindled  the  callow  fancy  of  the  most  idle 
and  shiftless  of  all  the  village  lads,  and  had  con- 
ceived for  this  Howard  Carpenter  one  of  those 
extravagant  passions  which  a  handsome  country 
boy  of  twenty-one  sometimes  inspires  in  an  an- 
gular, spectacled  woman  of  thirty.  When  she  re- 
turned to  her  duties  in  Boston,  Howard  followed 
her,  and  the  upshot  of  this  inexplicable  infatua- 
tion was  that  she  eloped  with  him,  eluding  the  re- 
proaches of  her  family  and  the  criticisms  of  her 
friends  by  going  with  him  to  the  Nebraska  fron- 
tier. Carpenter,  who,  of  course,  had  no  money,  had 


198  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

taken  a  homestead  in  Red  Willow  County,  fifty 
miles  from  the  railroad.  There  they  had  meas- 
ured off  their  quarter  section  themselves  by  driv- 
ing across  the  prairie  in  a  wagon,  to  the  wheel  of 
which  they  had  tied  a  red  cotton  handkerchief, 
and  counting  off  its  revolutions.  They  built  a  dug- 
out in  the  red  hillside,  one  of  those  cave  dwellings 
whose  inmates  so  often  reverted  to  primitive  con- 
ditions. Their  water  they  got  from  the  lagoons 
where  the  buffalo  drank,  and  their  slender  stock 
of  provisions  was  always  at  the  mercy  of  bands 
of  roving  Indians.  For  thirty  years  my  aunt  had 
not  been  further  than  fifty  miles  from  the  home- 
stead. 

But  Mrs.  Springer  knew  nothing  of  all  this, 
and  must  have  been  considerably  shocked  at 
what  was  left  of  my  kinswoman.  Beneath  the 
soiled  linen  duster  which,  on  her  arrival,  was  the 
most  conspicuous  feature  of  her  costume,  she 
wore  a  black  stuff  dress,  whose  ornamentation 
showed  that  she  had  surrendered  herself  unques- 
tioningly  into  the  hands  of  a  country  dressmaker. 
My  poor  aunt's  figure,  however,  would  have 
presented  astonishing  difficulties  to  any  dress- 
maker. Originally  stooped,  her  shoulders  were 
now  almost  bent  together  over  her  sunken  chest. 


A    WAGNER  MATINEE  199 

She  wore  no  stays,  and  her  gown,  which  trailed 
unevenly  behind,  rose  in  a  sort  of  peak  over  her 
abdomen.  She  wore  ill-fitting  false  teeth,  and 
her  skin  was  as  yellow  as  a  Mongolian's  from 
constant  exposure  to  a  pitiless  wind  and  to  the 
alkaline  water  which  hardens  the  most  trans- 
parent cuticle  into  a  sort  of  flexible  leather. 

I  owed  to  this  woman  most  of  the  good  that 
ever  came  my  way  in  my  boyhood,  and  had  a 
reverential  affection  for  her.  During  the  years 
when  I  was  riding  herd  for  my  uncle,  my  aunt, 
after  cooking  the  three  meals  —  the  first  of  which 
was  ready  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  —  and 
putting  the  six  children  to  bed,  would  often  stand 
until  midnight  at  her  ironing-board,  with  me  at 
the  kitchen  table  beside  her,  hearing  me  recite 
Latin  declensions  and  conjugations,  gently  shak- 
ing me  when  my  drowsy  head  sank  down  over  a 
page  of  irregular  verbs.  It  was  to  her,  at  her  iron- 
ing or  mending,  that  I  read  my  first  Shakspere, 
and  her  old  text-book  on  mythology  was  the  first 
that  ever  came  into  my  empty  hands.  She  taught 
me  my  scales  and  exercises,  too  —  on  the  little 
parlour  organ,  which  her  husband  had  bought  her 
after  fifteen  years,  during  which  she  had  not  so 
much  as  seen  any  instrument,  but  an  accordion 


200  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

that  belonged  to  one  of  the  Norwegian  farm- 
hands. She  would  sit  beside  me  by  the  hour, 
darning  and  counting  while  I  struggled  with  the 
"Joyous  Farmer,"  but  she  seldom  talked  to  me 
about  music,  and  I  understood  why.  She  was  a 
pious  woman;  she  had  the  consolations  of  religion 
and,  to  her  at  least,  her  martyrdom  was  not 
wholly  sordid.  Once  when  I  had  been  doggedly 
beating  out  some  easy  passages  from  an  old  score 
of  EuryafUhe  I  had  found  among  her  music 
books,  she  came  up  to  me  and,  putting  her  hands 
over  my  eyes,  gently  drew  my  head  back  upon  her 
shoulder,  saying  tremulously,  "Don't  love  it  so 
well,  Clark,  or  it  may  be  taken  from  you.  Oh! 
dear  boy,  pray  that  whatever  your  sacrifice  may 
be,  it  be  not  that." 

When  my  aunt  appeared  on  the  morning  after 
her  arrival,  she  was  still  in  a  semi-somnambulant 
state.  She  seemed  not  realize  that  she  was  in  the 
city  where  she  had  spent  her  youth,  the  place 
longed  for  hungrily  half  a  lifetime.  She  had 
been  so  wretchedly  train-sick  throughout  the 
journey  that  she  had  no  recollection  of  anything 
but  her  discomfort,  and,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, there  were  but  a  few  hours  of  nightmare 
between  the  farm  in  Red  Willow  County  and  my 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  201 

study  on  Newbury  Street.  I  had  planned  a  little 
pleasure  for  her  that  afternoon,  to  repay  her  for 
some  of  the  glorious  moments  she  had  given  me 
when  we  used  to  milk  together  in  the  straw- 
thatched  cowshed  and  she,  because  I  was  more 
than  usually  tried,  or  because  her  husband  had 
spoken  sharply  to  me,  would  tell  me  of  the  splen- 
did performance  of  the  Huguenots  she  had 
seen  in  Paris,  in  her  youth.  At  two  o'clock  the 
Symphony  Orchestra  was  to  give  a  Wagner 
programme,  and  I  intended  to  take  my  aunt; 
though,  as  I  conversed  with  her  I  grew  doubtful 
about  her  enjoyment  of  it.  Indeed,  for  her  own 
sake,  I  could  only  wish  her  taste  for  such  things 
quite  dead,  and  the  long  struggle  mercifully  end- 
ed at  last.  I  suggested  our  visiting  the  Conserva- 
tory and  the  Common  before  lunch,  but  she 
seemed  altogether  too  timid  to  wish  to  venture 
out.  She  questioned  me  absently  about  various 
changes  in  the  city,  but  she  was  chiefly  concerned 
that  she  had  forgotten  to  leave  instructions  about 
feeding  half -skimmed  milk  to  a  certain  weakling 
calf,  "old  Maggie's  calf,  you  know,  Clark,"  she 
explained,  evidently  having  forgotten  how  long  I 
had  been  away.  She  was  further  troubled  because 
she  had  neglected  to  tell  her  daughter  about  the 


202  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

freshly-opened  kit  of  mackerel  in  the  cellar, 
which  would  spoil  if  it  were  not  used  directly. 

I  asked  her  whether  she  had  ever  heard  any  of 
the  Wagnerian  operas,  and  found  that  she  had 
not,  though  she  was  perfectly  familiar  with  their 
respective  situations,  and  had  once  possessed  the 
piano  score  of  The  Flying  Dutchman  I  began 
to  think  it  would  have  been  best  to  get  her  back 
to  Red  Willow  County  without  waking  her,  and 
regretted  having  suggested  the  concert. 

From  the  time  we  entered  the  concert  hall, 
however,  she  was  a  trifle  less  passive  and  inert, 
and  for  the  first  time  seemed  to  perceive  her  sur- 
roundings. I  had  felt  some  trepidation  least  she 
might  become  aware  of  the  absurdities  of  her 
attire,  or  might  experience  some  painful  embar- 
rassment at  stepping  suddenly  into  the  world  to 
which  she  had  been  dead  for  a  quarter  of  a  cent- 
ury. But,  again,  I  found  how  superficially  I  had 
judged  her.  She  sat  looking  about  her  with  eyes  as 
impersonal,  almost  as  stony,  as  those  with  which 
the  granite  Rameses  in  a  museum  watches  the 
froth  and  fret  that  ebbs  and  flows  about  his  pedes- 
tal—  separated  from  it  by  the  lonely  stretch  of 
centuries.  I  have  seen  this  same  aloofness  in  old 
miners  who  drift  into  the  Brown  hotel  at  Denver, 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  203 

their  pockets  full  of  bullion,  their  linen  soiled, 
their  haggard  faces  unshaven;  standing  in  the 
thronged  corridors  as  solitary  as  though  they  were 
still  in  a  frozen  camp  on  the  Yukon,  conscious  that 
certain  experiences  have  isolated  them  from  their 
fellows  by  a  gulf  no  haberdasher  could  bridge. 

We  sat  at  the  extreme  left  of  the  first  balcony, 
facing  the  arc  of  our  own  and  the  balcony  above 
us,  veritable  hanging  gardens,  brilliant  as  tulip 
beds.  The  matinee  audience  was  made  up  chiefly 
of  women.  One  lost  the  contour  of  faces  and 
figures,  indeed  any  effect  of  line  whatever,  and 
there  was  only  the  colour  of  bodices  past  counting 
the  shimmer  of  fabrics  soft  and  firm,  silky  and 
sheer;  red,  mauve,  pink,  blue,  lilac,  purple,  ecru, 
rose,  yellow,  cream,  and  white,  all  the  colours 
that  an  impressionist  finds  in  a  sunlit  landscape, 
with  here  and  there  the  dead  shadow  of  a  frock 
coat.  My  Aunt  Georgiana  regarded  them  as 
though  they  had  been  so  many  daubs  of  tube- 
paint  on  a  palette. 

When  the  musicians  came  out  and  took  their 
places,  she  gave  a  little  stir  of  anticipation,  and 
looked  with  quickening  interest  down  over  the  rail 
at  that  invariable  grouping,  perhaps  the  first 
wholly  familiar  thing  that  had  greeted  her  eye 


204  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

since  she  had  left  old  Maggie  and  her  weakling 
calf.  I  could  feel  how  all  those  details  sank  into 
her  soul,  for  I  had  not  forgotten  how  they  had 
sunk  into  mine  when  I  came  fresh  from  plough- 
ing forever  and  forever  between  green  aisles  of 
corn,  where,  as  in  a  treadmill,  one  might  walk 
from  daybreak  to  dusk  without  perceiving  a 
shadow  of  change.  The  clean  profiles  of  the 
musicians,  the  gloss  of  their  linen,  the  dull 
black  of  their  coats,  the  beloved  shapes  of 
the  instruments,  the  patches  of  yellow  light 
thrown  by  the  green  shaded  lamps  on  the 
smooth,  varnished  bellies  of  the  'cellos  and  the 
bass  viols  in  the  rear,  the  restless,  wind-tossed 
forest  of  fiddle  necks  and  bows  —  I  recalled  how, 
in  the  first  orchestra  I  had  ever  heard,  those 
long  bow  strokes  seemed  to  draw  the  heart  out 
of  me,  as  a  conjurer's  stick  reels  out  yards  of 
paper  ribbon  from  a  hat. 

The  first  number  was  the  Tannhauser  over- 
ture. When  the  horns  drew  out  the  first  strain  of 
the  Pilgrim's  chorus,  my  Aunt  Georgiana  clutch- 
ed my  coat  sleeve.  Then  it  was  I  first  realized 
that  for  her  this  broke  a  silence  of  thirty  years; 
the  inconceivable  silence  of  the  plains.  With  the 
battle  between  the  two  motives,  with  the  frenzy 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  205 

of  the  Venusberg  theme  and  its  ripping  of  strings, 
there  came  to  me  an  overwhelming  sense  of  the 
waste  and  wear  we  are  so  powerless  to  combat; 
and  I  saw  again  the  tall,  naked  house  on  the 
prairie,  black  and  grim  as  a  wooden  fortress ;  the 
black  pond  where  I  had  learned  to  swim,  its 
margin  pitted  with  sun-dried  cattle  tracks;  the 
rain  gullied  clay  banks  about  the  naked  house, 
the  four  dwarf  ash  seedlings  where  the  dish- 
cloths were  always  hung  to  dry  before  the  kitchen 
door.  The  world  there  was  the  flat  world  of  the 
ancients;  to  the  east,  a  cornfield  that  stretched 
to  daybreak ;  to  the  west,  a  corral  that  reached 
to  sunset;  between,  the  conquests  of  peace,  dearer 
bought  than  those  of  war. 

The  overture  closed,  my  aunt  released  my  coat 
sleeve,  but  she  said  nothing.  She  sat  staring 
at  the  orchestra  through  a  dullness  of  thirty  years, 
through  the  films  made  little  by  little  by  each  of 
the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  every 
one  of  them.  What,  I  wondered,  did  she  get  from 
it  ?  She  had  been  a  good  pianist  in  her  day,  I 
knew,  and  her  musical  education  had  been 
broader  than  that  of  most  music  teachers  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago.  She  had  often  told  me 
of  Mozart's  operas  and  Meyerbeer's,  and  I  could 


206  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

remember  hearing  her  sing,  years  ago,  certain 
melodies  of  Verdi's.  When  I  had  fallen  ill  with  a 
fever  in  her  house  she  used  to  sit  by  my  cot  in  the 
evening  —  when  the  cool,  night  wind  blew  in 
through  the  faded  mosquito  netting  tacked  over 
the  window  and  I  lay  watching  a  certain  bright 
star  that  burned  red  above  the  cornfield  —  and 
sing  " Home  to  our  mountains,  O,  let  us  return!" 
in  a  way  fit  to  break  the  heart  of  a  Vermont  boy 
near  dead  of  homesickness  already. 

I  watched  her  closely  through  the  prelude  to 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  trying  vainly  to  conjecture 
what  that  seething  turmoil  of  strings  and  winds 
might  mean  to  her,  but  she  sat  mutely  staring  at 
the  violin  bows  that  drove  obliquely  downward, 
like  the  pelting  streaks  of  rain  in  a  summer 
shower.  Had  this  music  any  message  for  her  ? 
Had  she  enough  left  to  at  all  comprehend  this 
power  which  had  kindled  the  world  since  she  had 
left  it  ?  I  was  in  a  fever  of  curiosity,  but  Aunt 
Georgiana  sat  silent  upon  her  peak  in  Darien. 
She  preserved  this  utter  immobility  through- 
out the  number  from  the  Flying  Dutchman, 
though  her  fingers  worked  mechanically  upon 
her  black  dress,  as  though,  of  themselves,  they 
were  recalling  the  piano  score  they  had  once 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  207 

played.  Poor  old  hands!  They  had  been  stretched 
and  twisted  into  mere  tentacles  to  hold  and  lift 
and  knead  with;  the  palm,  unduly  swollen,  the 
fingers  bent  and  knotted  —  on  one  of  them  a 
thin,  worn  band  that  had  once  been  a  wedding 
ring.  As  I  pressed  and  gently  quieted  one  of  those 
groping  hands,  I  remembered  with  quivering  eye- 
lids their  services  for  me  in  other  days. 

Soon  after  the  tenor  began  the  "Prize  Song," 
I  heard  a  quick  drawn  breath  and  turned  to  my 
aunt.  Her  eyes  were  closed,  but  the  tears  were 
glistening  on  her  cheeks,  and  I  think,  in  a  mo- 
ment more,  they  were  in  my  eyes  as  well.  It  never 
really  died,  then  —  the  soul  that  can  suffer  so  ex- 
cruciatingly and  so  interminably;  it  withers  to  the 
outward  eye  only;  like  that  strange  moss  which 
can  lie  on  a  dusty  shelf  half  a  century  and  yet,  if 
placed  in  water,  grows  green  again.  She  wept  so 
throughout  the  development  and  elaboration  of 
the  melody. 

During  the  intermission  before  the  second  half 
of  the  concert,  I  questioned  my  aunt  and  found 
that  the  "Prize  Song"  was  not  new  to  her.  Some 
years  before  there  had  drifted  to  the  farm  in  Red 
Willow  County  a  young  German,  a  tramp  cow 
puncher,  who  had  sung  the  chorus  at  Beyruth, 


208  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

when  he  was  a  boy,  along  with  the  other  peasant 
boys  and  girls.  Of  a  Sunday  morning  he  used  to 
sit  on  his  gingham-sheeted  bed  in  the  hands' 
bedroom  which  opened  off  the  kitchen,  cleaning 
the  leather  of  his  boots  and  saddle,  singing  the 
" Prize  Song,"  while  my  aunt  went  about  her 
work  in  the  kitchen.  She  had  hovered  about  him 
until  she  had  prevailed  upon  him  to  join  the  coun- 
try church,  though  his  sole  fitness  for  this  step,  in 
so  far  as  I  could  gather,  lay  in  his  boyish  face  and 
his  possession  of  this  divine  melody.  Shortly  after- 
ward he  had  gone  to  town  on  the  Fourth  of  July, 
been  drunk  for  several  days,  lost  his  money  at  a 
faro  table,  ridden  a  saddled  Texan  steer  on  a  bet, 
and  disappeared  with  a  fractured  collar-bone. 
All  this  my  aunt  told  me  huskily,  wanderingly, 
as  though  she  were  talking  in  the  weak  lapses  of 
illness. 

"Well,  we  have  come  to  better  things  than  the 
old  Trovatore  at  any  rate,  Aunt  Georgie?"  I 
queried,  with  a  well  meant  effort  at  jocularity. 

Her  lip  quivered  and  she  hastily  put  her  hand- 
kerchief up  to  her  mouth.  From  behind  it  she 
murmured,  "And  you  have  been  hearing  this 
ever  since  you  left  me,  Clark  ?"  Her  question  was 
the  gentlest  and  saddest  of  reproaches. 


A  WAGNER  MATINEE  209 

The  second  half  of  the  programme  consisted  of 
four  numbers  from  the  Ring,  and  closed  with 
Siegfried's  funeral  march.  My  aunt  wept  quietly, 
but  almost  continuously,  as  a  shallow  vessel  over- 
flows in  a  rain-storm.  From  time  to  time  her  dim 
eyes  looked  up  at  the  lights  which  studded  the 
ceiling,  burning  softly  under  their  dull  glass 
globes ;  doubtless  they  were  stars  in  truth  to  her.  I 
was  still  perplexed  as  to  what  measure  of  musical 
comprehension  was  left  to  her,  she  who  had  heard 
nothing  but  the  singing  of  Gospel  Hymns  at 
Methodist  services  in  the  square  frame  school- 
house  on  Section  Thirteen  for  so  many  years.  I 
was  wholly  unable  to  gauge  how  much  of  it  had 
been  dissolved  in  soapsuds,  or  worked  into  bread, 
or  milked  into  the  bottom  of  a  pail. 

The  deluge  of  sound  poured  on  and  on;  I 
never  knew  what  she  found  in  the  shining  cur- 
rent of  it;  I  never  knew  how  far  it  bore  her,  or 
past  what  happy  islands.  From  the  trembling  of 
her  face  I  could  well  believe  that  before  the 
last  numbers  she  had  been  carried  out  where 
the  myriad  graves  are,  into  the  grey,  nameless 
burying  grounds  of  the  sea ;  or  into  some  world 
of  death  vaster  yet,  where,  from  the  begin- 
ning  of  the   world,   hope  has  lain  down  with 


210  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

hope  and  dream  with  dream  and,  renouncing, 
slept. 

The  concert  was  over;  the  people  filed  out  of 
the  hall  chattering  and  laughing,  glad  to  relax 
and  find  the  living  level  again,  but  my  kins- 
woman made  no  effort  to  rise.  The  harpist  slipped 
its  green  felt  cover  over  his  instrument ;  the  flute- 
players  shook  the  water  from  their  mouthpieces; 
the  men  of  the  orchestra  went  out  one  by  one, 
leaving  the  stage  to  the  chairs  and  music  stands, 
empty  as  a  winter  cornfield. 

I  spoke  to  my  aunt.  She  burst  into  tears  and 
sobbed  pleadingly.  "I  don't  want  to  go,  Clark,  I 
don't  want  to  go!" 

I  understood.  For  her,  just  outside  the  door  of 
the  concert  hall,  lay  the  black  pond  with  the 
cattle-tracked  bluffs;  the  tall,  unpainted  house, 
with  weather-curled  boards;  naked  as  a  tower, 
the  crook-backed  ash  seedlings  where  the  dish- 
cloths hung  to  dry;  the  gaunt,  moulting  turkeys 
picking  up  refuse  about  the  kitchen  door. 


PAUL'S  CASE 


PAUL'S  CASE 

A   STUDY   IN   TEMPERAMENT 

It  was  Paul's  afternoon  to  appear  before  the 
faculty  of  the  Pittsburgh  High  School  to  account 
for  his  various  misdemeanours.  He  had  been  sus- 
pended a  week  ago,  and  his  father  had  called  at 
the  Principal's  office  and  confessed  his  perplexity 
about  his  son.  Paul  entered  the  faculty  room 
suave  and  smiling.  His  clothes  were  a  trifle  out- 
grown and  the  tan  velvet  on  the  collar  of  his  open 
overcoat  was  frayed  and  worn;  but  for  all  that 
there  was  something  of  the  dandy  about  him,  and 
he  wore  an  opal  pin  in  his  neatly  knotted  black 
four-in-hand,  and  a  red  carnation  in  his  button- 
hole. This  latter  adornment  the  faculty  somehow 
felt  was  not  properly  significant  of  the  contrite 
spirit  befitting  a  boy  under  the  ban  of  suspension. 
Paul  was  tall  for  his  age  and  very  thin,  with 
high,  cramped  shoulders  and  a  narrow  chest. 
His  eyes  were  remarkable  for  a  certain  hysterical 
brilliancy  and  he  continually  used  them  in  a  con- 


214  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

scious,  theatrical  sort  of  way,  peculiarly  offen- 
sive in  a  boy.  The  pupils  were  abnormally  large, 
as  though  he  were  addicted  to  belladonna,  but 
there  was  a  glassy  glitter  about  them  which  that 
drug  does  not  produce. 

When  questioned  by  the  Principal  as  to  why 
he  was  there,  Paul  stated,  politely  enough,  that 
he  wanted  to  come  back  to  school.  This  was  a  lie, 
but  Paul  was  quite  accustomed  to  lying;  found 
it,  indeed,  indispensable  for  overcoming  friction. 
His  teachers  were  asked  to  state  their  respective 
charges  against  him,  which  they  did  with  such  a 
rancour  and  aggrievedness  as  evinced  that  this 
was  not  a  usual  case.  Disorder  and  impertinence 
were  among  the  offences  named,  yet  each  of  his 
instructors  felt  that  it  was  scarcely  possible  to 
put  into  words  the  real  cause  of  the  trouble, 
which  lay  in  a  sort  of  hysterically  defiant  manner 
of  the  boy's;  in  the  contempt  which  they  all  knew 
he  felt  for  them,  and  which  he  seemingly  made 
not  the  least  effort  to  conceal.  Once,  when  he  had 
been  making  a  synopsis  of  a  paragraph  at  the 
blackboard,  his  English  teacher  had  stepped  to 
his  side  and  attempted  to  guide  his  hand.  Paul 
had  started  back  with  a  shudder  and  thrust  his 
hands    violently    behind    him.    The    astonished 


PAUL'S  CASE  215 

woman  could  scarcely  have  been  more  hurt  and 
embarrassed  had  he  struck  at  her.  The  insult 
was  so  involuntary  and  definitely  personal  as  to 
be  unforgettable.  In  one  way  and  another,  he  had 
made  all  his  teachers,  men  and  women  alike, 
conscious  of  the  same  feeling  of  physical  aver- 
sion. In  one  class  he  habitually  sat  with  his  hand 
shading  his  eyes;  in  another  he  always  looked 
out  of  the  window  during  the  recitation;  in  an- 
other he  made  a  running  commentary  on  the 
lecture,  with  humorous  intention. 

His  teachers  felt  this  afternoon  that  his  whole 
attitude  was  symbolized  by  his  shrug  and  his 
flippantly  red  carnation  flower,  and  they  fell  up- 
on him  without  mercy,  his  English  teacher  lead- 
ing the  pack.  He  stood  through  it  smiling,  his 
pale  lips  parted  over  his  white  teeth.  (His  lips 
were  continually  twitching,  and  he  had  a  habit  of 
raising  his  eyebrows  that  was  contemptuous  and 
irritating  to  the  last  degree.)  Older  boys  than 
Paul  had  broken  down  and  shed  tears  under 
that  baptism  of  fire,  but  his  set  smile  did  not 
once  desert  him,  and  his  only  sign  of  discomfort 
was  the  nervous  trembling  of  the  fingers  that 
toyed  with  the  buttons  of  his  overcoat,  and  an 
occasional  jerking  of  the  other  hand  that  held 


216  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

his  hat.  Paul  was  always  smiling,  always  glanc- 
ing about  him,  seeming  to  feel  that  people  might 
be  watching  him  and  trying  to  detect  something. 
This  conscious  expression,  since  it  was  as  far  as 
possible  from  boyish  mirthfulness,  was  usually 
attributed  to  insolence  or  "smartness." 

As  the  inquisition  proceeded,  one  of  his  in- 
structors repeated  an  impertinent  remark  of  the 
boy's,  and  the  Principal  asked  him  whether  he 
thought  that  a  courteous  speech  to  have  made  a 
woman.  Paul  shrugged  his  shoulders  slightly  and 
his  eyebrows  twitched. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  replied.  "I  didn't  mean  to 
be  polite  or  impolite,  either.  I  guess  it's  a  sort  of 
way  I  have  of  saying  things  regardless." 

The  Principal,  who  was  a  sympathetic  man, 
asked  him  whether  he  didn't  think  that  a  way  it 
would  be  well  to  get  rid  of.  Paul  grinned  and  said 
he  guessed  so.  When  he  was  told  that  he  could 
go,  he  bowed  gracefully  and  went  out.  His  bow 
was  but  a  repetition  of  the  scandalous  red  carna- 
tion. 

His  teachers  were  in  despair,  and  his  drawing 
master  voiced  the  feeling  of  them  all  when  he  de- 
clared there  was  something  about  the  boy  which 
none  of  them  understood.  He  added:  "I  don't 


PAULS  CASE  217 

really  believe  that  smile  of  his  comes  altogether 
from  insolence;  there's  something  sort  of  haunted 
about  it.  The  boy  is  not  strong,  for  one  thing.  I 
happen  to  know  that  he  was  born  in  Colorado, 
only  a  few  months  before  his  mother  died  out 
there  of  a  long  illness.  There  is  something  wrong 
about  the  fellow." 

The  drawing  master  had  come  to  realize  that, 
in  looking  at  Paul,  one  saw  only  his  white  teeth 
and  the  forced  animation  of  his  eyes.  One  warm 
afternoon  the  boy  had  gone  to  sleep  at  his  draw- 
ing-board, and  his  master  had  noted  with  amaze- 
ment what  a  white,  blue-veined  face  it  was; 
drawn  and  wrinkled  like  an  old  man's  about  the 
eyes,  the  lips  twitching  even  in  his  sleep,  and 
stiff  with  a  nervous  tension  that  drew  them  back 
from  his  teeth. 

His  teachers  left  the  building  dissatisfied  and 
unhappy;  humiliated  to  have  felt  so  vindictive 
toward  a  mere  boy,  to  have  uttered  this  feeling 
in  cutting  terms,  and  to  have  set  each  other  on, 
as  it  were,  in  the  grewsome  game  of  intemperate 
reproach.  Some  of  them  remembered  having  seen 
a  miserable  street  cat  set  at  bay  by  a  ring  of  tor- 
mentors. 

As  for  Paul,  he  ran  down  the  hill  whistling  the 


218  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Soldiers'  Chorus  from  Faust  looking  wildly  be- 
hind him  now  and  then  to  see  whether  some  of 
his  teachers  were  not  there  to  writhe  under  his 
light-heart edness.  As  it  was  now  late  in  the  af- 
ternoon and  Paul  was  on  duty  that  evening  as 
usher  at  Carnegie  Hall,  he  decided  that  he  would 
not  go  home  to  supper.  When  he  reached  the 
concert  hall  the  doors  were  not  yet  open  and,  as 
it  was  chilly  outside,  he  decided  to  go  up  into  the 
picture  gallery  —  always  deserted  at  this  hour  — 
where  there  were  some  of  Raffelli's  gay  studies 
of  Paris  streets  and  an  airy  blue  Venetian  scene 
or  two  that  always  exhilarated  him.  He  was  de- 
lighted to  find  no  one  in  the  gallery  but  the  old 
guard,  who  sat  in  one  corner,  a  newspaper  on  his 
knee,  a  black  patch  over  one  eye  and  the  other 
closed.  Paul  possessed  himself  of  the  place  and 
walked  confidently  up  and  down,  whistling  un- 
der his  breath.  After  a  while  he  sat  down  before  a 
blue  Rico  and  lost  himself.  When  he  bethought 
him  to  look  at  his  watch,  it  was  after  seven 
o'clock,  and  he  rose  with  a  start  and  ran  down- 
stairs, making  a  face  at  Augustus,  peering  out 
from  the  cast-room,  and  an  evil  gesture  at  the 
Venus  of  Milo  as  he  passed  her  on  the  stairway. 
When  Paul  reached  the  ushers'  dressing-room 


PAUL'S  CASE  219 

half-a-dozen  boys  were  there  already,  and  he  be- 
gan excitedly  to  tumble  into  his  uniform.  It  was 
one  of  the  few  that  at  all  approached  fitting,  and 
Paul  thought  it  very  becoming  —  though  he  knew 
that  the  tight,  straight  coat  accentuated  his  nar- 
row chest,  about  which  he  was  exceedingly  sensi- 
tive. He  was  always  considerably  excited  while  he 
dressed,  twanging  all  over  to  the  tuning  of  the 
strings  and  the  preliminary  flourishes  of  the  horns 
in  the  music-room;  but  to-night  he  seemed  quite 
beside  himself,  and  he  teased  and  plagued  the 
boys  until,  telling  him  that  he  was  crazy,  they  put 
him  down  on  the  floor  and  sat  on  him. 

Somewhat  calmed  by  his  suppression,  Paul 
dashed  out  to  the  front  of  the  house  to  seat  the 
early  comers.  He  was  a  model  usher;  gracious 
and  smiling  he  ran  up  and  down  the  aisles ;  noth- 
ing was  too  much  trouble  for  him;  he  carried 
messages  and  brought  programmes  as  though 
it  were  his  greatest  pleasure  in  life,  and  all  the 
people  in  his  section  thought  him  a  charming 
boy,  feeling  that  he  remembered  and  admired 
them.  As  the  house  filled,  he  grew  more  and  more 
vivacious  and  animated,  and  the  colour  came  to 
his  cheeks  and  lips.  It  was  very  much  as  though 
this  were  a  great  reception  and  Paul  were  the 


220  THE  TROLL   GARDEN 

host.  Just  as  the  musicians  came  out  to  take 
their  places,  his  English  teacher  arrived  with 
checks  for  the  seats  which  a  prominent  manu- 
facturer had  taken  for  the  season.  She  betrayed 
some  embarrassment  when  she  handed  Paul  the 
tickets,  and  a  hauteur  which  subsequently  made 
her  feel  very  foolish.  Paul  was  startled  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  had  the  feeling  of  wanting  to  put  her 
out;  what  business  had  she  here  among  all  these 
fine  people  and  gay  colours  ?  He  looked  her  over 
and  decided  that  she  was  not  appropriately 
dressed  and  must  be  a  fool  to  sit  downstairs  in 
such  togs.  The  tickets  had  probably  been  sent 
her  out  of  kindness,  he  reflected  as  he  put  down 
a  seat  for  her,  and  she  had  about  as  much  right 
to  sit  there  as  he  had. 

When  the  symphony  began  Paul  sank  into  one 
of  the  rear  seats  with  a  long  sigh  of  relief,  and 
lost  himself  as  he  had  done  before  the  Rico.  It 
was  not  that  symphonies,  as  such,  meant  any- 
thing in  particular  to  Paul,  but  the  first  sigh  of  the 
instruments  seemed  to  free  some  hilarious  and 
potent  spirit  within  him;  something  that  strug- 
gled there  like  the  Genius  in  the  bottle  found  by 
the  Arab  fisherman.  He  felt  a  sudden  zest  of 
life;  the  lights  danced  before  his  eyes  and  the 


PAUL'S  CASE  221 

concert  hall  blazed  into  unimaginable  splendour. 
When  the  soprano  soloist  came  on,  Paul  forgot 
even  the  nastiness  of  his  teacher's  being  there 
and  gave  himself  up  to  the  peculiar  stimulus  such 
personages  always  had  for  him.  The  soloist 
chanced  to  be  a  German  woman,  by  no  means  in 
her  first  youth,  and  the  mother  of  many  children ; 
but  she  wore  an  elaborate  gown  and  a  tiara,  and 
above  all  she  had  that  indefinable  air  of  achieve- 
ment, that  world-shine  upon  her,  which,  in  Paul's 
eyes,  made  her  a  veritable  queen  of  Romance. 

After  a  concert  was  over  Paul  was  always  ir- 
ritable and  wretched  until  he  got  to  sleep,  and 
to-night  he  was  even  more  than  usually  restless. 
He  had  the  feeling  of  not  being  able  to  let  down, 
of  its  being  impossible  to  give  up  this  delicious 
excitement  which  was  the  only  thing  that  could 
be  called  living  at  all.  During  the  last  number  he 
withdrew  and,  after  hastily  changing  his  clothes 
in  the  dressing-room,  slipped  out  to  the  side  door 
where  the  soprano's  carriage  stood.  Here  he  be- 
gan pacing  rapidly  up  and  down  the  walk,  wait- 
ing to  see  her  come  out. 

Over  yonder  the  Schenley,  in  its  vacant 
stretch,  loomed  big  and  square  through  the  fine 
rain,  the  windows  of  its  twelve  stories  glowing 


222  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

like  those  of  a  lighted  card-board  house  under  a 
Christmas  tree.  All  the  actors  and  singers  of  the 
better  class  stayed  there  when  they  were  in  the 
city,  and  a  number  of  the  big  manufacturers  of 
the  place  lived  there  in  the  winter.  Paul  had  of- 
ten hung  about  the  hotel,  watching  the  people 
go  in  and  out,  longing  to  enter  and  leave  school- 
masters and  dull  care  behind  him  forever. 

At  last  the  singer  came  out,  accompanied  by 
the  conductor,  who  helped  her  into  her  carriage 
and  closed  the  door  with  a  cordial  auf  wiedersehen 
which  set  Paul  to  wondering  whether  she  were  not 
an  old  sweetheart  of  his.  Paul  followed  the  car- 
riage over  to  the  hotel,  walking  so  rapidly  as  not 
to  be  far  from  the  entrance  when  the  singer 
alighted  and  disappeared  behind  the  swinging 
glass  doors  that  were  opened  by  a  negro  in  a  tall 
hat  and  a  long  coat.  In  the  moment  that  the  door 
was  ajar,  it  seemed  to  Paul  that  he,  too,  entered. 
He  seemed  to  feel  himself  go  after  her  up  the 
steps,  into  the  warm,  lighted  building,  into  an 
exotic,  a  tropical  world  of  shiny,  glistening  sur- 
faces and  basking  ease.  He  reflected  upon  the 
mysterious  dishes  that  were  brought  into  the 
dining-room,  the  green  bottles  in  buckets  of  ice, 
as  he  had  seen  them  in  the  supper  party  pictures 


PAUL'S  CASE  223 

of  the  Sunday  World  supplement.  A  quick  gust 
of  wind  brought  the  rain  down  with  sudden 
vehemence,  and  Paul  was  startled  to  find  that  he 
was  still  outside  in  the  slush  of  the  gravel  drive- 
way; that  his  boots  were  letting  in  the  water  and 
his  scanty  overcoat  was  clinging  wet  about  him; 
that  the  lights  in  front  of  the  concert  hall  were 
out,  and  that  the  rain  was  driving  in  sheets  be- 
tween him  and  the  orange  glow  of  the  windows 
above  him.  There  it  was,  what  he  wanted  —  tan- 
gibly before  him,  like  the  fairy  world  of  a  Christ- 
mas pantomime,  but  mocking  spirits  stood  guard 
at  the  doors,  and,  as  the  rain  beat  in  his  face, 
Paul  wondered  whether  he  were  destined  always 
to  shiver  in  the  black  night  outside,  looking  up 
at  it. 

He  turned  and  walked  reluctantly  toward  the 
car  tracks.  The  end  had  to  come  sometime;  his 
father  in  his  night-clothes  at  the  top  of  the  stairs, 
explanations  that  did  not  explain,  hastily  im- 
provised fictions  that  were  forever  tripping  him 
up,  his  upstairs  room  and  its  horrible  yellow 
wall-paper,  the  creaking  bureau  with  the  greasy 
plush  collar-box,  and  over  his  painted  wooden 
bed  the  pictures  of  George  Washington  and  John 
Calvin,    and    the    framed    motto,    "Feed    my 


224  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Lambs,"  which  had  been  worked  in  red  worsted 
by  his  mother. 

Half  an  hour  later,  Paul  alighted  from  his  car 
and  went  slowly  down  one  of  the  side  streets  off 
the  main  thoroughfare.  It  was  a  highly  respecta- 
ble street,  where  all  the  houses  were  exactly  alike, 
and  wThere  business  men  of  moderate  means 
begot  and  reared  large  families  of  children,  all  of 
whom  went  to  Sabbath-school  and  learned  the 
shorter  catechism,  and  were  interested  in  arith- 
metic; all  of  whom  were  as  exactly  alike  as  their 
homes,  and  of  a  piece  with  the  monotony  in 
which  they  lived.  Paul  never  went  up  Cordelia 
Street  without  a  shudder  of  loathing.  His  home 
was  next  the  house  of  the  Cumberland  minister. 
He  approached  it  to-night  with  the  nerveless 
sense  of  defeat,  the  hopeless  feeling  of  sinking 
back  forever  into  ugliness  and  commonness  that 
he  had  always  had  when  he  came  home.  The 
moment  he  turned  into  Cordelia  Street  he  felt 
the  waters  close  above  his  head.  After  each  of 
these  orgies  of  living,  he  experienced  all  the 
physical  depression  which  follows  a  debauch; 
the  loathing  of  respectable  beds,  of  common 
food,  of  a  house  penetrated  by  kitchen  odours; 
a  shuddering  repulsion  for  the  flavourless,  colour- 


PAUL'S  CASE  225 

less  mass  of  every-day  existence ;  a  morbid  desire 
for  cool  things  and  soft  lights  and  fresh  flowers. 

The  nearer  he  approached  the  house,  the  more 
absolutely  unequal  Paul  felt  to  the  sight  of  it  all; 
his  ugly  sleeping  chamber;  the  cold  bath-room 
with  the  grimy  zinc  tub,  the  cracked  mirror,  the 
dripping  spiggots;  his  father,  at  the  top  of  the 
stairs,  his  hairy  legs  sticking  out  from  his  night- 
shirt, his  feet  thrust  into  carpet  slippers.  He  was 
so  much  later  than  usual  that  there  would  cer- 
tainly be  inquiries  and  reproaches.  Paul  stopped 
short  before  the  door.  He  felt  that  he  could  not 
be  accosted  by  his  father  to-night ;  that  he  could 
not  toss  again  on  that  miserable  bed.  He  would 
not  go  in.  He  would  tell  his  father  that  he  had  no 
car  fare,  and  it  was  raining  so  hard  he  had  gone 
home  with  one  of  the  boys  and  stayed  all  night. 

Meanwhile,  he  was  wet  and  cold.  He  went 
around  to  the  back  of  the  house  and  tried  one  of 
the  basement  windows,  found  it  open,  raised  it 
cautiously,  and  scrambled  down  the  cellar  wall 
to  the  floor.  There  he  stood,  holding  his  breath, 
terrified  by  the  noise  he  had  made,  but  the  floor 
above  him  was  silent,  and  there  was  no  creak  on 
the  stairs.  He  found  a  soap-box,  and  carried  it 
over  to  the  soft  ring  of  light  that  streamed  from 


226  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

the  furnace  door,  and  sat  down.  He  was  horribly 
afraid  of  rats,  so  he  did  not  try  to  sleep,  but  sat 
looking  distrustfully  at  the  dark,  still  terrified 
least  he  might  have  awakened  his  father.  In  such 
reactions,  after  one  of  the  experiences  which 
made  days  and  nights  out  of  the  dreary  blanks  of 
the  calendar,  when  his  senses  were  deadened, 
Paul's  head  was  always  singularly  clear.  Sup- 
pose his  father  had  heard  him  getting  in  at  the 
window  and  had  come  down  and  shot  him  for  a 
burglar?  Then,  again,  suppose  his  father  had 
come  down,  pistol  in  hand,  and  he  had  cried  out 
in  time  to  save  himself,  and  his  father  had  been 
horrified  to  think  how  nearly  he  had  killed  him  ? 
Then,  again,  suppose  a  day  should  come  when 
his  father  would  remember  that  night,  and  wish 
there  had  been  no  warning  cry  to  stay  his  hand  ? 
With  this  last  supposition  Paul  entertained  him- 
self until  daybreak. 

The  following  Sunday  was  fine;  the  sodden 
November  chill  was  broken  by  the  last  flash  of 
autumnal  summer.  In  the  morning  Paul  had  to 
go  to  church  and  Sabbath-school,  as  always.  On 
seasonable  Sunday  afternoons  the  burghers  of 
Cordelia  Street  always  sat  out  on  their  front 
"stoops,"  and  talked  to  their  neighbours  on  the 


PAUL'S  CASE  227 

next  stoop,  or  called  to  those  across  the  street  in 
neighbourly  fashion.  The  men  usually  sat  on  gay 
cushions  placed  upon  the  steps  that  led  down 
to  the  sidewalk,  while  the  women,  in  their  Sun- 
day "waists,"  sat  in  rockers  on  the  cramped 
porches,  pretending  to  be  greatly  at  their  ease. 
The  children  played  in  the  streets ;  there  were  so 
many  of  them  that  the  place  resembled  the  rec- 
reation grounds  of  a  kindergarten.  The  men  on 
the  steps  —  all  in  their  shirt  sleeves,  their  vests 
unbuttoned  —  sat  with  their  legs  well  apart, 
their  stomachs  comfortably  protruding,  and 
talked  of  the  prices  of  things,  or  told  anecdotes 
of  the  sagacity  of  their  various  chiefs  and  over- 
lords. They  occasionally  looked  over  the  multi- 
tude of  squabbling  children,  listened  affection- 
ately to  their  high-pitched,  nasal  voices,  smiling 
to  see  their  own  proclivities  reproduced  in  their 
offspring,  and  interspersed  their  legends  of  the 
iron  kings  with  remarks  about  their  sons'  prog- 
ress at  school,  their  grades  in  arithmetic,  and  the 
amounts  they  had  saved  in  their  toy  banks. 

On  this  last  Sunday  of  November,  Paul  sat  all 
the  afternoon  on  the  lowest  step  of  his  "stoop," 
staring  into  the  street,  while  his  sisters,  in  their 
rockers,  were  talking  to  the  minister's  daughters 


228  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

next  door  about  how  many  shirt-waists  they  had 
made  in  the  last  week,  and  how  many  waffles  some 
one  had  eaten  at  the  last  church  supper.  When  the 
weather  was  warm,  and  his  father  was  in  a  par- 
ticularly jovial  frame  of  mind,  the  girls  made 
lemonade,  which  was  always  brought  out  in  a 
red-glass  pitcher,  ornamented  with  forget-me- 
nots  in  blue  enamel.  This  the  girls  thought  very 
fine,  and  the  neighbours  always  joked  about  the 
suspicious  colour  of  the  pitcher. 

To-day  Paul's  father  sat  on  the  top  step,  talk- 
ing to  a  young  man  who  shifted  a  restless  baby 
from  knee  to  knee.  He  happened  to  be  the  young 
man  who  was  daily  held  up  to  Paul  as  a  model, 
and  after  whom  it  was  his  father's  dearest  hope 
that  he  would  pattern.  This  young  man  was  of  a 
ruddy  complexion,  with  a  compressed,  red 
mouth,  and  faded,  near-sighted  eyes,  over  which 
he  wore  thick  spectacles,  with  gold  bows  that 
curved  about  his  ears.  He  was  clerk  to  one  of 
the  magnates  of  a  great  steel  corporation,  and 
was  looked  upon  in  Cordelia  Street  as  a  young 
man  with  a  future.  There  was  a  story  that,  some 
five  years  ago  —  he  was  now  barely  twenty-six  — 
he  had  been  a  trifle  dissipated  but  in  order  to 
curb  his  appetites  and  save  the  loss  of  time  and 


PAUL'S  CASE  229 

strength  that  a  sowing  of  wild  oats  might  have 
entailed,  he  had  taken  his  chief's  advice,  oft  re- 
iterated to  his  employees,  and  at  twenty-one  had 
married  the  first  woman  whom  he  could  persuade 
to  share  his  fortunes.  She  happened  to  be  an 
angular  school-mistress,  much  older  than  he,  who 
also  wore  thick  glasses,  and  who  had  now  borne 
him  four  children,  all  near-sighted,  like  herself. 
The  young  man  was  relating  how  his  chief, 
now  cruising  in  the  Mediterranean,  kept  in  touch 
with  all  the  details  of  the  business,  arranging  his 
office  hours  on  his  yacht  just  as  though  he  were 
at  home,  and  "knocking  off  work  enough  to  keep 
two  stenographers  busy."  His  father  told,  in  turn, 
the  plan  his  corporation  was  considering,  of  put- 
ting in  an  electric  railway  plant  at  Cairo.  Paul 
snapped  his  teeth ;  he  had  an  awful  apprehension 
that  they  might  spoil  it  all  before  he  got  there. 
Yet  he  rather  liked  to  hear  these  legends  of  the 
iron  kings,  that  were  told  and  retold  on  Sundays 
and  holidays;  these  stories  of  palaces  in  Venice, 
yachts  on  the  Mediterranean,  and  high  play  at 
Monte  Carlo  appealed  to  his  fancy,  and  he  was 
interested  in  the  triumphs  of  these  cash  boys  who 
had  become  famous,  though  he  had  no  mind  for 
the  cash-boy  stage. 


230  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

After  supper  was  over,  and  he  had  helped  to 
dry  the  dishes,  Paul  nervously  asked  his  father 
whether  he  could  go  to  George's  to  get  some  help 
in  his  geometry,  and  still  more  nervously  asked 
for  car  fare.  This  latter  request  he  had  to  repeat, 
as  his  father,  on  principle,  did  not  like  to  hear 
requests  for  money,  whether  much  or  little.  He 
asked  Paul  whether  he  could  not  go  to  some  boy 
who  lived  nearer,  and  told  him  that  he  ought  not 
to  leave  his  school  work  until  Sunday;  but  he 
gave  him  the  dime.  He  was  not  a  poor  man,  but 
he  had  a  worthy  ambition  to  come  up  in  the 
world.  His  only  reason  for  allowing  Paul  to  usher 
was,  that  he  thought  a  boy  ought  to  be  earning  a 
little. 

Paul  bounded  upstairs,  scrubbed  the  greasy 
odour  of  the  dish-water  from  his  hands  with  the 
ill-smelling  soap  he  hated,  and  then  shook  over 
his  fingers  a  few  drops  of  violet  water  from  the 
bottle  he  kept  hidden  in  his  drawer.  He  left  the 
house  with  his  geometry  conspicuously  under  his 
arm,  and  the  moment  he  got  out  of  Cordelia 
Street  and  boarded  a  downtown  car,  he  shook  off 
the  lethargy  of  two  deadening  days,  and  began 
to  live  again. 

The  leading  juvenile  of  the  permanent  stock 


PAUL'S  CASE  231 

company  which  played  at  one  of  the  downtown 
theatres  was  an  acquaintance  of  Paul's,  and  the 
boy  had  been  invited  to  drop  in  at  the  Sunday- 
night  rehearsals  whenever  he  could.  For  more  than 
a  year  Paul  had  spent  every  available  moment 
loitering  about  Charley  Edwards's  dressing-room. 
He  had  won  a  place  among  Edwards's  fol- 
lowing not  only  because  the  young  actor,  who 
could  not  afford  to  employ  a  dresser,  often 
found  him  useful,  but  because  he  recognized  in 
Paul  something  akin  to  what  churchmen  term 
"vocation." 

It  was  at  the  theatre  and  at  Carnegie  Hall 
that  Paul  really  lived;  the  rest  was  but  a  sleep 
and  a  forgetting.  This  was  Paul's  fairy  tale,  and 
it  had  for  him  all  the  allurement  of  a  secret  love. 
The  moment  he  inhaled  the  gassy,  painty,  dusty 
odour  behind  the  scenes,  he  breathed  like  a  pris- 
oner set  free,  and  felt  within  him  the  possibility 
of  doing  or  saying  splendid,  brilliant,  poetic 
things.  The  moment  the  cracked  orchestra  beat 
out  the  overture  from  Martha,  or  jerked  at 
the  serenade  from  Rigoletto,  all  stupid  and 
ugly  things  slid  from  him,  and  his  senses  were 
deliciously,  yet  delicately  fired. 

Perhaps  it  was  because,  in  Paul's  world,  the 


232  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

natural  nearly  always  wore  the  guise  of  ugliness, 
that  a  certain  element  of  artificiality  seemed  to 
him  necessary  in  beauty.  Perhaps  it  was  because 
his  experience  of  life  elsewhere  was  so  full  of  Sab- 
bath-school picnics,  petty  economies,  wholesome 
advice  as  to  how  to  succeed  in  life,  and  the  un- 
escapable  odours  of  cooking,  that  he  found  this 
existence  so  alluring,  these  smartly-clad  men 
and  women  so  attractive,  that  he  was  so  moved 
by  these  starry  apple  orchards  that  bloomed 
perennially  under  the  lime-light. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  put  it  strongly  enough 
how  convincingly  the  stage  entrance  of  that 
theatre  was  for  Paul  the  actual  portal  of  Romance. 
Certainly  none  of  the  company  ever  suspected  it, 
least  of  all  Charley  Edwards.  It  was  very  like  the 
old  stories  that  used  to  float  about  London  of 
fabulously  rich  Jews,  who  had  subterranean  halls 
there,  with  palms,  and  fountains,  and  soft  lamps 
and  richly  apparelled  women  who  never  saw  the 
disenchanting  light  of  London  day.  So,  in  the 
midst  of  that  smoke-palled  city,  enamoured  of 
figures  and  grimy  toil,  Paul  had  his  secret  tem- 
ple, his  wishing  carpet,  his  bit  of  blue- and- white 
Mediterranean  shore  bathed  in  perpetual  sun- 
shine. 


PAUL'S  CASE  233 

Several  of  Paul's  teachers  had  a  theory  that  his 
imagination  had  been  perverted  by  garish  fiction, 
but  the  truth  was  that  he  scarcely  ever  read  at  all. 
The  books  at  home  were  not  such  as  would 
either  tempt  or  corrupt  a  youthful  mind,  and  as 
for  reading  the  novels  that  some  of  his  friends 
urged  upon  him  —  well,  he  got  what  he  wanted 
much  more  quickly  from  music;  any  sort  of 
music,  from  an  orchestra  to  a  barrel  organ.  He 
needed  only  the  spark,  the  indescribable  thrill 
that  made  his  imagination  master  of  his  senses, 
and  he  could  make  plots  and  pictures  enough  of 
his  own.  It  was  equally  true  that  he  was  not  stage 
struck  —  not,  at  any  rate,  in  the  usual  acceptation 
of  that  expression.  He  had  no  desire  to  become  an 
actor,  any  more  than  he  had  to  become  a  musi- 
cian. He  felt  no  necessity  to  do  any  of  these 
things;  what  he  wanted  was  to  see,  to  be  in  the 
atmosphere,  float  on  the  wave  of  it,  to  be  car- 
ried out,  blue  league  after  blue  league,  away 
from  everything. 

After  a  night  behind  the  scenes,  Paul  found 
the  school-room  more  than  ever  repulsive;  the 
bare  floors  and  naked  walls;  the  prosy  men  who 
never  wore  frock  coats,  or  violets  in  their  button- 
holes; the  women  with  their  dull  gowns,  shrill 


234  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

voices,  and  pitiful  seriousness  about  prepositions 
that  govern  the  dative.  He  could  not  bear  to  have 
the  other  pupils  think,  for  a  moment,  that  he 
took  these  people  seriously;  he  must  convey  to 
them  that  he  considered  it  all  trivial,  and  was 
there  only  by  way  of  a  jest,  anyway.  He  had  auto- 
graph pictures  of  all  the  members  of  the  stock 
company  which  he  showed  his  classmates,  tell- 
ing them  the  most  incredible  stories  of  his  famil- 
iarity with  these  people,  of  his  acquaintance  with 
the  soloists  who  came  to  Carnegie  Hall,  his  sup- 
pers with  them  and  the  flowers  he  sent  them. 
When  these  stories  lost  their  effect,  and  his  audi- 
ence grew  listless,  he  became  desperate  and 
would  bid  all  the  boys  good-bye,  announcing 
that  he  was  going  to  travel  for  awhile;  going  to 
Naples,  to  Venice,  to  Egypt.  Then,  next  Monday, 
he  would  slip  back,  conscious  and  nervously 
smiling;  his  sister  was  ill,  and  he  should  have  to 
defer  his  voyage  until  spring. 

Matters  went  steadily  worse  with  Paul  at 
school.  In  the  itch  to  let  his  instructors  know  how 
heartily  he  despised  them  and  their  homilies, 
and  how  thoroughly  he  was  appreciated  else- 
where, he  mentioned  once  or  twice  that  he  had 
no  time  to  fool  with  theorems;  adding — with  a 


PAUL'S  CASE  235 

twitch  of  the  eyebrows  and  a  touch  of  that  ner- 
vous bravado  which  so  perplexed  them  —  that  he 
was  helping  the  people  down  at  the  stock  com- 
pany; they  were  old  friends  of  his. 

The  upshot  of  the  matter  was,  that  the  Princi- 
pal went  to  Paul's  father,  and  Paul  was  taken 
out  of  school  and  put  to  work.  The  manager  at 
Carnegie  Hall  was  told  to  get  another  usher  in 
his  stead;  the  doorkeeper  at  the  theatre  was 
warned  not  to  admit  him  to  the  house;  and  Char- 
ley Edwards  remorsefully  promised  the  boy's 
father  not  to  see  him  again. 

The  members  of  the  stock  company  were  vast- 
ly amused  when  some  of  Paul's  stories  reached 
them  —  especially  the  women.  They  were  hard- 
working women,  most  of  them  supporting  indi- 
gent husbands  or  brothers,  and  they  laughed 
rather  bitterly  at  having  stirred  the  boy  to  such 
fervid  and  florid  inventions.  They  agreed  with 
the  faculty  and  with  his  father  that  Paul's  was  a 
bad  case. 

The  east-bound  train  was  ploughing  through  a 
January  snow-storm;  the  dull  dawn  was  begin- 
ning to  show  grey  when  the  engine  whistled  a 
mile  out  of  Newark.  Paul  started  up  from  the 


236  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

seat  where  he  had  lain  curled  in  uneasy  slumber, 
rubbed  the  breath-misted  window  glass  with  his 
hand,  and  peered  out.  The  snow  was  whirling 
in  curling  eddies  above  the  white  bottom  lands, 
and  the  drifts  lay  already  deep  in  the  fields  and 
along  the  fences,  while  here  and  there  the  long 
dead  grass  and  dried  weed  stalks  protruded  black 
above  it.  Lights  shone  from  the  scattered  houses, 
and  a  gang  of  labourers  who  stood  beside  the 
track  waved  their  lanterns. 

Paul  had  slept  very  little,  and  he  felt  grimy  and 
uncomfortable.  He  had  made  the  all-night  jour- 
ney in  a  day  coach,  partly  because  he  was  asham- 
ed, dressed  as  he  was,  to  go  into  a  Pullman,  and 
partly  because  he  was  afraid  of  being  seen  there 
by  some  Pittsburgh  business  man,  who  might 
have  noticed  him  in  Denny  &  Carson's  office. 
When  the  whistle  awoke  him,  he  clutched  quickly 
at  his  breast  pocket,  glancing  about  him  with  an 
uncertain  smile.  But  the  little,  clay-bespattered 
Italians  were  still  sleeping,  the  slatternly  women 
across  the  aisle  were  in  open-mouthed  oblivion, 
and  even  the  crumby,  crying  babies  were  for  the 
nonce  stilled.  Paul  settled  back  to  struggle  with 
his  impatience  as  best  he  could. 

When  he  arrived  at  the  Jersey  City  station, 


PAUL'S  CASE  237 

he  hurried  through  his  breakfast,  manifestly  ill  at 
ease  and  keeping  a  sharp  eye  about  him.  After 
he  reached  the  Twenty-third  Street  station,  he 
consulted  a  cabman,  and  had  himself  driven  to  a 
men's  furnishing  establishment  that  was  just 
opening  for  the  day.  He  spent  upward  of  two 
hours  there,  buying  with  endless  reconsidering 
and  great  care.  His  new  street  suit  he  put  on  in 
the  fitting-room;  the  frock  coat  and  dress  clothes 
he  had  bundled  into  the  cab  with  his  linen.  Then 
he  drove  to  a  hatter's  and  a  shoe  house.  His  next 
errand  was  at  Tiffany's,  where  he  selected  his 
silver  and  a  new  scarf-pin.  He  would  not  wait  to 
have  his  silver  marked,  he  said.  Lastly,  he  stop- 
ped at  a  trunk  shop  on  Broadway,  and  had  his 
purchases  packed  into  various  travelling  bags. 

It  was  a  little  after  one  o'clock  when  he  drove 
up  to  the  Waldorf,  and  after  settling  with  the 
cabman,  went  into  the  office.  He  registered  from 
Washington;  said  his  mother  and  father  had  been 
abroad,  and  that  he  had  come  down  to  await  the 
arrival  of  their  steamer.  He  told  his  story  plausi- 
bly and  had  no  trouble,  since  he  volunteered  to 
pay  for  them  in  advance,  in  engaging  his  rooms ;  a 
sleeping-room,  sitting-room  and  bath. 

Not  once,  but  a  hundred  times  Paul  had  plan- 


238  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

ned  this  entry  into  New  York.  He  had  gone  over 
every  detail  of  it  with  Charley  Edwards,  and  in 
his  scrap  book  at  home  there  were  pages  of  de- 
scription about  New  York  hotels,  cut  from  the 
Sunday  papers.  When  he  was  shown  to  his  sitting- 
room  on  the  eighth  floor,  he  saw  at  a  glance  that 
everything  was  as  it  should  be ;  there  was  but  one 
detail  in  his  mental  picture  that  the  place  did  not 
realize,  so  he  rang  for  the  bell  boy  and  sent  him 
down  for  flowers.  He  moved  about  nervously  un- 
til the  boy  returned,  putting  away  his  new  linen 
and  fingering  it  delightedly  as  he  did  so.  When 
the  flowers  came,  he  put  them  hastily  into  water, 
and  then  tumbled  into  a  hot  bath.  Presently  he 
came  out  of  his  white  bath-room,  resplendent  in 
his  new  silk  underwear,  and  playing  with  the 
tassels  of  his  red  robe.  The  snow  was  whirling  so 
fiercely  outside  his  windows  that  he  could  scarce- 
ly see  across  the  street,  but  within  the  air  was  de- 
liciously  soft  and  fragrant.  He  put  the  violets  and 
jonquils  on  the  taboret  beside  the  couch,  and 
threw  himself  down,  with  a  long  sigh,  covering 
himself  with  a  Roman  blanket.  He  was  thoroughly 
tired ;  he  had  been  in  such  haste,  he  had  stood  up  to 
such  a  strain,  covered  so  much  ground  in  the  last 
twenty-four  hours,  that  he  wanted  to  think  how 


PAUL'S  CASE  239 

it  had  all  come  about.  Lulled  by  the  sound  of  the 
wind,  the  warm  air,  and  the  cool  fragrance  of  the 
flowers,  he  sank  into  deep,  drowsy  retrospection. 

It  had  been  wonderfully  simple;  when  they  had 
shut  him  out  of  the  theatre  and  concert  hall, 
when  they  had  taken  away  his  bone,  the  whole 
thing  was  virtually  determined.  The  rest  was  a 
mere  matter  of  opportunity.  The  only  thing  that 
at  all  surprised  him  was  his  own  courage  —  for  he 
realized  well  enough  that  he  had  always  been  tor- 
mented by  fear,  a  sort  of  apprehensive  dread  that, 
of  late  years,  as  the  meshes  of  the  lies  he  had 
told  closed  about  him,  had  been  pulling  the  mus- 
cles of  his  body  tighter  and  tighter.  Until  now,  he 
could  not  remember  the  time  when  he  had  not 
been  dreading  something.  Even  when  he  was  a 
little  boy,  it  was  always  there  —  behind  him,  or 
before,  or  on  either  side.  There  had  always  been 
the  shadowed  corner,  the  dark  place  into  which 
he  dared  not  look,  but  from  which  something 
seemed  always  to  be  watching  him  —  and  Paul 
had  done  things  that  were  not  pretty  to  watch,  he 
knew. 

But  now  he  had  a  curious  sense  of  relief,  as 
though  he  had  at  last  thrown  down  the  gauntlet 
to  the  thing  in  the  corner. 


240  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

Yet  it  was  but  a  day  since  he  had  been  sulking 
in  the  traces ;  but  yesterday  afternoon  that  he  had 
been  sent  to  the  bank  with  Denny  &  Carson's  de- 
posit, as  usual  —  but  this  time  he  was  instructed 
to  leave  the  book  to  be  balanced.  There  was 
above  two  thousand  dollars  in  checks,  and  nearly 
a  thousand  in  the  bank  notes  which  he  had  taken 
from  the  book  and  quietly  transferred  to  his 
pocket.  At  the  bank  he  had  made  out  a  new  de- 
posit slip.  His  nerves  had  been  steady  enough  to 
permit  of  his  returning  to  the  office,  where  he  had 
finished  his  work  and  asked  for  a  full  day's  holi- 
day to-morrow,  Saturday,  giving  a  perfectly  rea- 
sonable pretext.  The  bank  book,  he  knew,  would 
not  be  returned  before  Monday  or  Tuesday,  and 
his  father  would  be  out  of  town  for  the  next  week. 
From  the  time  he  slipped  the  bank  notes  into  his 
pocket  until  he  boarded  the  night  train  for  New 
York,  he  had  not  known  a  moment's  hesitation. 
It  was  not  the  first  time  Paul  had  steered  through 
treacherous  waters. 

How  astonishingly  easy  it  had  all  been ;  here  he 
was,  the  thing  done ;  and  this  time  there  would  be 
no  awakening,  no  figure  at  the  top  of  the  stairs. 
He  watched  the  snow  flakes  whirling  by  his  win- 
dow until  he  fell  asleep. 


PAUL'S  CASE  241 

When  he  awoke,  it  was  three  o'clock  in  the  af- 
ternoon. He  bounded  up  with  a  start;  half  of  one 
of  his  precious  days  gone  already !  He  spent  more 
than  an  hour  in  dressing,  watching  every  stage  of 
his  toilet  carefully  in  the  mirror.  Everything  was 
quite  perfect;  he  was  exactly  the  kind  of  boy  he 
had  always  wanted  to  be. 

When  he  went  downstairs,  Paul  took  a  carriage 
and  drove  up  Fifth  Avenue  toward  the  Park.  The 
snow  had  somewhat  abated ;  carriages  and  trades- 
men's wagons  were  hurrying  soundlessly  to  and 
fro  in  the  winter  twilight ;  boys  in  woollen  mufflers 
were  shovelling  off  the  doorsteps;  the  avenue  stages 
made  fine  spots  of  colour  against  the  white  street. 
Here  and  there  on  the  corners  were  stands,  with 
whole  flower  gardens  blooming  under  glass  cases, 
against  the  sides  of  which  the  snow  flakes  stuck 
and  melted;  violets,  roses,  carnations,  lilies  of  the 
valley  —  somehow  vastly  more  lovely  and  alluring 
that  they  blossomed  thus  unnaturally  in  the  snow. 
The  Park  itself  was  a  wonderful  stage  winter- 
piece. 

When  he  returned,  the  pause  of  the  twilight 
had  ceased,  and  the  tune  of  the  streets  had  chang- 
ed. The  snow  was  falling  faster,  lights  streamed 
from  the  hotels  that  reared  their  dozen  stories 


242  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

fearlessly  up  into  the  storm,  defying  the  raging 
Atlantic  winds.  A  long,  black  stream  of  carriages 
poured  down  the  avenue,  intersected  here  and 
there  by  other  streams,  tending  horizontally. 
There  were  a  score  of  cabs  about  the  entrance  of 
his  hotel,  and  his  driver  had  to  wait.  Boys  in  liv- 
ery were  running  in  and  out  of  the  awning  stretch- 
ed across  the  sidewalk,  up  and  down  the  red  vel- 
vet carpet  laid  from  the  door  to  the  street.  Above, 
about,  within  it  all  was  the  rumble  and  roar,  the 
hurry  and  toss  of  thousands  of  human  beings  as 
hot  for  pleasure  as  himself,  and  on  every  side  of 
him  towered  the  glaring  affirmation  of  the  om- 
nipotence of  wealth. 

The  boy  set  his  teeth  and  drew  his  shoulders 
together  in  a  spasm  of  realization;  the  plot  of 
all  dramas,  the  text  of  all  romances,  the  nerve- 
stuff  of  all  sensations  was  whirling  about  him 
like  the  snow  flakes.  He  burnt  like  a  faggot  in  a 
tempest. 

When  Paul  went  down  to  dinner,  the  music 
of  the  orchestra  came  floating  up  the  elevator 
shaft  to  greet  him.  His  head  whirled  as  he  stepped 
into  the  thronged  corridor,  and  he  sank  back  into 
one  of  the  chairs  against  the  wall  to  get  his  breath. 
The  lights,  the  chatter,  the  perfumes,  the  bewil- 


PAUL'S  CASE  243 

dering  medley  of  colour  —  he  had,  for  a  moment, 
the  feeling  of  not  being  able  to  stand  it.  But  only 
for  a  moment ;  these  were  his  own  people,  he  told 
himself.  He  went  slowly  about  the  corridors, 
through  the  writing-rooms,  smoking-rooms,  re- 
ception-rooms, as  though  he  were  exploring  the 
chambers  of  an  enchanted  palace,  built  and  peo- 
pled for  him  alone. 

When  he  reached  the  dining-room  he  sat  down 
at  a  table  near  a  window.  The  flowers,  the  white 
linen,  the  many-coloured  wine  glasses,  the  gay 
toilettes  of  the  women,  the  low  popping  of  corks, 
the  undulating  repetitions  of  the  Blue  Danube 
from  the  orchestra,  all  flooded  Paul's  dream  with 
bewildering  radiance.  When  the  roseate  tinge  of 
his  champagne  was  added  —  that  cold,  precious, 
bubbling  stuff  that  creamed  and  foamed  in  his 
glass  —  Paul  wondered  that  there  were  honest 
men  in  the  world  at  all.  This  was  what  all  the 
world  was.  fighting  for,  he  reflected;  this  was 
what  all  the  struggle  was  about.  He  doubted  the 
reality  of  his  past.  Had  he  ever  known  a  place 
called  Cordelia  Street,  a  place  where  fagged- 
looking  business  men  got  on  the  early  car;  mere 
rivets  in  a  machine  they  seemed  to  Paul,  —  sick- 
ening men,  with  combings  of  children's  hair  al- 


244  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

ways  hanging  to  their  coats,  and  the  smell  of 
cooking  in  their  clothes.  Cordelia  Street  —  Ah! 
that  belonged  to  another  time  and  country;  had 
he  not  always  been  thus,  had  he  not  sat  here 
night  after  night,  from  as  far  back  as  he  could  re- 
member, looking  pensively  over  just  such  shim- 
mering textures,  and  slowly  twirling  the  stem  of  a 
glass  like  this  one  between  his  thumb  and  middle 
finger  ?  He  rather  thought  he  had. 

He  was  not  in  the  least  abashed  or  lonely.  He 
had  no  especial  desire  to  meet  or  to  know  any  of 
these  people;  all  he  demanded  was  the  right  to 
look  on  and  conjecture,  to  watch  the  pageant. 
The  mere  stage  properties  were  all  he  contended 
for.  Nor  was  he  lonely  later  in  the  evening,  in  his 
lodge  at  the  Metropolitan,  He  was  now  entirely  rid 
of  his  nervous  misgivings,  of  his  forced  aggres- 
siveness, of  the  imperative  desire  to  show  himself 
different  from  his  surroundings.  He  felt  now  that 
his  surroundings  explained  him.  Nobody  ques- 
tioned the  purple;  he  had  only  to  wear  it  pas- 
sively. He  had  only  to  glance  down  at  his  attire  to 
reassure  himself  that  here  it  would  be  impossible 
for  any  one  to  humiliate  him. 

He  found  it  hard  to  leave  his  beautiful  sitting- 
room  to  go  to  bed  that  night,  and  sat  long  watch- 


PAUL'S  CASE  245 

ing  the  raging  storm  from  his  turret  window. 
When  he  went  to  sleep  it  was  with  the  lights 
turned  on  in  his  bedroom ;  partly  because  of  his 
old  timidity,  and  partly  so  that,  if  he  should 
wake  in  the  night,  there  would  be  no  wretched 
moment  of  doubt,  no  horrible  suspicion  of  yellow 
wall-paper,  or  of  Washington  and  Calvin  above 
his  bed. 

Sunday  morning  the  city  was  practically  snow- 
bound. Paul  breakfasted  late,  and  in  the  after- 
noon he  fell  in  with  a  wild  San  Francisco  boy,  a 
freshman  at  Yale,  who  said  he  had  run  down  for 
a  "little  flyer"  over  Sunday.  The  young  man  of- 
fered to  show  Paul  the  night  side  of  the  town,  and 
the  two  boys  went  out  together  after  dinner,  not 
returning  to  the  hotel  until  seven  o'clock  the  next 
morning.  They  had  started  out  in  the  confiding 
warmth  of  a  champagne  friendship,  but  their 
parting  in  the  elevator  was  singularly  cool.  The 
freshman  pulled  himself  together  to  make  his 
train,  and  Paul  went  to  bed.  He  awoke  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  very  thirsty  and  dizzy, 
and  rang  for  ice- water,  coffee,  and  the  Pittsburgh 
papers. 

On  the  part  of  the  hotel  management,  Paul  ex- 
cited no  suspicion.  There  was  this  to  be  said  for 


246  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

him,  that  he  wore  his  spoils  with  dignity  and  in 
no  way  made  himself  conspicuous.  Even  under 
the  glow  of  his  wine  he  was  never  boisterous, 
though  he  found  the  stuff  like  a  magician's  wand 
for  wonder-building.  His  chief  greediness  lay  in 
his  ears  and  eyes,  and  his  excessses  were  not  of- 
fencive  ones.  His  dearest  pleasures  were  the  grey 
winter  twilights  in  his  sitting-room ;  his  quiet  en- 
joyment of  his  flowers,  his  clothes,  his  wide  divan, 
his  cigarette  and  his  sense  of  power.  He  could  not 
remember  a  time  when  he  had  felt  so  at  peace 
with  himself.  The  mere  release  from  the  neces- 
sity of  petty  lying,  lying  every  day  and  every  day, 
restored  his  self-respect.  He  had  never  lied  for 
pleasure,  even  at  school;  but  to  be  noticed  and 
admired,  to  assert  his  difference  from  other 
Cordelia  Street  boys;  and  he  felt  a  good  deal 
more  manly,  more  honest,  even,  now  that  he 
had  no  need  for  boastful  pretensions,  now  that 
he  could,  as  his  actor  friends  used  to  say,  "dress 
the  part. "  It  was  characteristic  that  remorse  did 
not  occur  to  him.  His  golden  days  went  by  with- 
out a  shadow,  and  he  made  each  as  perfect  as  he 
could. 

On  the  eighth  day  after  his  arrival  in  New 
York,  he  found  the  whole  affair  exploited  in  the 


PAUL'S  CASE  247 

Pittsburgh  papers,  exploited  with  a  wealth  of  de- 
tail which  indicated  that  local  news  of  a  sensa- 
tional nature  was  at  a  low  ebb.  The  firm  of 
Denny  &  Carson  announced  that  the  boy's  father 
had  refunded  the  full  amount  of  the  theft,  and 
that  they  had  no  intention  of  prosecuting.  The 
Cumberland  minister  had  been  interviewed,  and 
expressed  his  hope  of  yet  reclaiming  the  mother- 
less lad,  and  his  Sabbath-school  teacher  de- 
clared that  she  would  spare  no  effort  to  that 
end.  The  rumour  had  reached  Pittsburgh  that 
the  boy  had  been  seen  in  a  New  York  hotel, 
and  his  father  had  gone  East  to  find  him  and 
bring  him  home. 

Paul  had  just  come  in  to  dress  for  dinner;  he 
sank  into  a  chair,  weak  to  the  knees,  and  clasped 
his  head  in  his  hands.  It  was  to  be  worse  than  jail, 
even ;  the  tepid  waters  of  Cordelia  Street  were  to 
close  over  him  finally  and  forever.  The  grey  mo- 
notony stretched  before  him  in  hopeless,  unre- 
lieved years;  Sabbath-school,  Young  People's 
Meeting,  the  yellow-papered  room,  the  damp 
dish-towels;  it  all  rushed  back  upon  him  with  a 
sickening  vividness.  He  had  the  old  feeling  that 
the  orchestra  had  suddenly  stopped,  the  sinking 
sensation  that  the  play  was  over.  The  sweat  broke 


248  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

out  on  his  face,  and  he  sprang  to  his  feet,  looked 
about  him  with  his  white,  conscious  smile,  and 
winked  at  himself  in  the  mirror.  With  something 
of  the  old  childish  belief  in  miracles  with  which 
he  had  so  often  gone  to  class,  all  his  lessons  un- 
learned, Paul  dressed  and  dashed  whistling  down 
the  corridor  to  the  elevator. 

He  had  no  sooner  entered  the  dining-room  and 
caught  the  measure  of  the  music  than  his  remem- 
brance was  lightened  by  his  old  elastic  power  of 
claiming  the  moment,  mounting  with  it,  and  find- 
ing it  all  sufficient.  The  glare  and  glitter  about 
him,  the  mere  scenic  accessories  had  again,  and 
for  the  last  time,  their  old  potency.  He  would 
show  himself  that  he  was  game,  he  would  finish  the 
thing  splendidly.  He  doubted,  more  than  ever, 
the  existence  of  Cordelia  Street,  and  for  the  first 
time  he  drank  his  wine  recklessly.  Was  he  not, 
after  all,  one  of  those  fortunate  beings  born  to  the 
purple,  was  he  not  still  himself  and  in  his  own 
place  ?  He  drummed  a  nervous  accompaniment 
to  the  Pagliacci  music  and  looked  about  him,  tell- 
ing himself  over  and  over  that  it  had  paid. 

He  reflected  drowsily,  to  the  swell  of  the  music 
and  the  chill  sweetness  of  his  wine,  that  he  might 
have  done  it  more  wisely.   He  might  have  caught 


PAUL'S  CASE  249 

an  outbound  steamer  and  been  well  out  of  their 
clutches  before  now.  But  the  other  side  of  the 
world  had  seemed  too  far  away  and  too  uncer- 
tain then ;  he  could  not  have  waited  for  it ;  his  need 
had  been  too  sharp.  If  he  had  to  choose  over 
again,  he  would  do  the  same  thing  to-morrow. 
He  looked  affectionately  about  the  dining-room, 
now  gilded  with  a  soft  mist.  Ah,  it  had  paid 
indeed ! 

Paul  was  awakened  next  morning  by  a  painful 
throbbing  in  his  head  and  feet.  He  had  thrown 
himself  across  the  bed  without  undressing,  and 
had  slept  with  his  shoes  on.  His  limbs  and  hands 
were  lead  heavy,  and  his  tongue  and  throat  were 
parched  and  burnt.  There  came  upon  him  one  of 
those  fateful  attacks  of  clear-headedness  that 
never  occurred  except  when  he  was  physically 
exhausted  and  his  nerves  hung  loose.  He  lay  still 
and  closed  his  eyes  and  let  the  tide  of  things  wash 
over  him. 

His  father  was  in  New  York;  "stopping  at 
some  joint  or  other,"  he  told  himself.  The  mem- 
ory of  successive  summers  on  the  front  stoop  fell 
upon  him  like  a  weight  of  black  water.  He  had 
not  a  hundred  dollars  left;  and  he  knew  now, 
more  than  ever,  that  money  was  everything,  the 


250  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

wall  that  stood  between  all  he  loathed  and  all  he 
wanted.  The  thing  was  winding  itself  up;  he  had 
thought  of  that  on  his  first  glorious  day  in  New 
York,  and  had  even  provided  a  way  to  snap  the 
thread.  It  lay  on  his  dressing-table  now;  he  had 
got  it  out  last  night  when  he  came  blindly  up  from 
dinner,  but  the  shiny  metal  hurt  his  eyes,  and  he 
disliked  the  looks  of  it. 

He  rose  and  moved  about  with  a  painful  effort, 
succumbing  now  and  again  to  attacks  of  nausea. 
It  was  the  old  depression  exaggerated;  all  the 
world  had  become  Cordelia  Street.  Yet  some- 
how he  was  not  afraid  of  anything,  was  abso- 
lutely calm;  perhaps  because  he  had  looked  into 
the  dark  corner  at  last  and  knew.  It  was  bad 
enough,  what  he  saw  there,  but  somehow  not  so 
bad  as  his  long  fear  of  it  had  been.  He  saw  every- 
thing clearly  now.  He  had  a  feeling  that  he  had 
made  the  best  of  it,  that  he  had  lived  the  sort  of 
life  he  was  meant  to  live,  and  for  half  an  hour 
he  sat  staring  at  the  revolver.  But  he  told  himself 
that  was  not  the  way,  so  he  went  downstairs  and 
took  a  cab  to  the  ferry. 

When  Paul  arrived  at  Newark,  he  got  off  the 
train  and  took  another  cab,  directing  the  driver 
to  follow  the  Pennsylvania  tracks  out  of  the  town. 


PAUL'S  CASE  251 

The  snow  lay  heavy  on  the  roadways  and  had 
drifted  deep  in  the  open  fields.  Only  here  and 
there  the  dead  grass  or  dried  weed  stalks  pro- 
jected, singularly  black,  above  it.  Once  well  into 
the  country,  Paul  dismissed  the  carriage  and 
walked,  floundering  along  the  tracks,  his  mind 
a  medley  of  irrelevant  things.  He  seemed  to  hold 
in  his  brain  an  actual  picture  of  everything  he 
had  seen  that  morning.  He  remembered  every 
feature  of  both  his  drivers,  of  the  toothless  old 
woman  from  whom  he  had  bought  the  red  flow- 
ers in  his  coat,  the  agent  from  whom  he  had  got 
his  ticket,  and  all  of  his  fellow-passengers  on  the 
ferry.  His  mind,  unable  to  cope  with  vital  mat- 
ters near  at  hand,  worked  feverishly  and  deftly 
at  sorting  and  grouping  these  images.  They  made 
for  him  a  part  of  the  ugliness  of  the  world,  of  the 
ache  in  his  head,  and  the  bitter  burning  on  his 
tongue.  He  stooped  and  put  a  handful  of  snow 
into  his  mouth  as  he  walked,  but  that,  too,  seem- 
ed hot.  When  he  reached  a  little  hillside,  where 
the  tracks  ran  through  a  cut  some  twenty  feet 
below  him,  he  stopped  and  sat  down. 

The  carnations  in  his  coat  were  drooping  with 
the  cold,  he  noticed;  their  red  glory  all  over.  It 
occurred  to  him  that  all  the  flowers  he  had  seen 


252  THE  TROLL  GARDEN 

in  the  glass  cases  that  first  night  must  have  gone 
the  same  way,  long  before  this.  It  was  only  one 
splendid  breath  they  had,  in  spite  of  their  brave 
mockery  at  the  winter  outside  the  glass;  and  it 
was  a  losing  game  in  the  end,  it  seemed,  this  re- 
volt against  the  homilies  by  which  the  world  is 
run.  Paul  took  one  of  the  blossoms  carefully  from 
his  coat  and  scooped  a  little  hole  in  the  snow, 
where  he  covered  it  up.  Then  he  dozed  a  while, 
from  his  weak  condition,  seeming  insensible  to 
the  cold. 

The  sound  of  an  approaching  train  awoke 
him,  and  he  started  to  his  feet,  remembering  only 
his  resolution,  and  afraid  least  he  should  be  too 
late.  He  stood  watching  the  approaching  locomo- 
tive, his  teeth  chattering,  his  lips  drawn  away 
from  them  in  a  frightened  smile ;  once  or  twice  he 
glanced  nervously  sidewise,  as  though  he  were 
being  watched.  When  the  right  moment  came, 
he  jumped,  As  he  fell,  the  folly  of  his  haste  oc- 
curred to  him  with  merciless  clearness,  the  vast- 
ness  of  what  he  had  left  undone.  There  flashed 
through  his  brain,  clearer  than  ever  before,  the 
blue  of  Adriatic  water,  the  yellow  of  Algerian 
sands. 

He  felt  something  strike  his  chest,  and  that  his 


PAUL'S  CASE  253 

body  was  being  thrown  swiftly  through  the  air, 
on  and  on,  immeasurably  far  and  fast,  while  his 
limbs  were  gently  relaxed.  Then,  because  the 
picture  making  mechanism  was  crushed,  the 
disturbing  visions  flashed  into  black,  and  Paul 
dropped  back  into  the  immense  design  of  things. 

THE  END 


THE  McCLURE  PRESS,  NEW  YORK 


on 


